Good spellers use 4 main strategies: the phonetic strategy (spell the sounds you hear), the morphemic strategy (spell by meaning and word parts), the rule-based strategy (use spelling rules), and the visual strategy (check what looks right). Most people combine all 4 once they spell well.
Good spellers do not become good by accident. They get there through practice and by learning methods that work. The 4 strategies below can help anyone become a confident speller. If you wonder why it is worth the effort, read why grammar and spelling matter.
1. The phonetic strategy
The phonetic strategy should be one of the first methods taught to beginners. It teaches them to listen to each sound in a word, and then to write each sound with a letter or a group of letters.
For example, learners find out that the sound /a/ in a word like man is spelled with the letter a, and the sound /n/ with the letter n. Some sounds need more than one letter, such as the /sh/ in ship. A letter or group of letters that stands for one sound is called a phonogram. Breaking the words they hear into their separate sounds is a great way for beginners to practice and master this strategy.
2. The morphemic strategy
The morphemic strategy is based on knowing how the meaning of a word affects the way it is spelled. A morpheme is the smallest part of a word that has a meaning of its own: a root, a prefix, or a suffix. Spellers learn to work out the meaning of a word by looking at these parts.
For example, sign, signal, and signature share the same root. That explains the silent g in sign: you can hear it in the other two words. In the same way, unhappiness is un- + happy + -ness, with the y of happy changed to i.
Knowing when and how to add prefixes and suffixes to base words is an important part of this strategy, and with practice it becomes automatic for most spellers. (Choosing between two prefixes is a topic of its own: see in- or un-.) Words with Latin or Greek roots can be taught as part of this method, too. Many Greek words, for example, spell the /f/ sound as ph: photograph, telephone.
3. The rule-based strategy
Many sounds in English can be spelled in more than one way. The sound /j/, for example, can be written as j (jump), g (gem), or dge (bridge). This is where spelling rules become useful: English has many reliable rules and patterns that help learners make the right choice when they write on their own.
The word kitchen shows two of them. At the start of a word, the sound /k/ is usually spelled k before e or i (kitchen, kite) and c before a, o, or u (cat, cot, cup). And after a short vowel, the sound /ch/ is usually spelled tch (kitchen, catch, match). There are exceptions, such as much, such, and which, but the rule works for most words. In the same way, /j/ after a short vowel is usually spelled dge (badge, bridge).
The 4 most helpful spelling rules explains more rules like these.
4. The visual strategy
Good spellers often write a word in several ways to see which one looks right. This builds their visual memory of words: they remember what a word looks like, for example that the /j/ sound at the end of bridge is spelled dge.
The visual strategy is especially important for homophones: words that sound the same but are spelled differently and mean different things, such as tale and tail or pray and prey. You cannot hear the difference, so you have to remember what each word looks like and link that picture to its meaning. Word games and a lot of reading help learners build this visual memory.
Learning and practicing each of these strategies leads most people to accurate spelling, and good spellers combine them without thinking about it. As your knowledge of English grows, so does your understanding of each strategy. For the words you are still unsure of, the Spell Checker underlines misspelled words in your text and suggests corrections.