C's and S's etc

I've always been quite good at spelling, but I am not sure how. I think it is just from reading a lot when small and familiarity, rather than from rules. As you noted, rules seem inconsistent and arbitrary.

Double letters are another confusion. When to have two n, m, s, etc. Plus you have words like borough or cough which make little spelling sense. 

Knowing that English is a mixture of Anglo Saxon (Germanic), Norse (from the Vikings), French (from the Normans), Latin and Greek (from the church and scholars), plus some Celtic names and other adopted words from all over, does not make spelling easier, but explains the mixed rules.

Apparently, a thing called 'the great vowel shift' in the 14-16th centuries is a reason words aren't spelt how they sound, when spelling was standardized. Making some letters silent happened at the same time.

Words like 'precise' exercise' 'neice' 'nice, when to use an S or a C and as for nessercary I can never remember how to spell it, so I rarely use it when writing.

When to use two letter in the middle of a word is another muddle.

Then you've got Q's and K's, how do you decide which of those to use, let alone which witch?

I wasn't taught phonetics, I don't think, I know I wasn't taught grammar, the thinking at the time was that we'd pick it up just from reading.

I'm dyslexic too

I think that maybe we fall into one of two categories - either we are good at recognising patterns and so learn the "shape" of a word we've seen, or we're dyslexic and so struggle with words where there are no rules for the spelling.

I'm in the first group, so I see "neice" and automatically know it looks wrong - I think for a moment, write it as " niece", then I can see that's correct. In a spelling test when I was 10 (when I usually got them all correct) we were told to write "miser" and I incorrectly wrote it as "mizer" because I'd never seen it written down before.

I before E except after C is a rubbish rule though, as there are quite a few exceptions, such as weird, seize, height, leisure, or weigh. I know some are from French or Old English, but that doesn't help someone with spelling.

In English, Q is paired with u, which gives a "Kw" sound - as in Queen - while k is used for the sound at the beginning of King. (I believe that only non English words use just a q without the u, such as qi or qatari) Of course, the letter c makes the same sound as k in some words, like carols or carrots and the same sound as s in others, such as face.

Unfortunately our language is partly a mish-mash of others, and there often aren't any rules you can follow to help you spell correctly. 

I often think a word looks wrong when it's right.

I often think a word looks wrong when it's right.