Rule #1

Capital letters

• Days and Months: Monday, Friday, June, April
• Proper nouns i.e. names of people and places: James, Angela, Kuala Lumpur
• Titles of people: Mr. Smith, Dr. Broody
• Names of cities, countries, nationalities and languages: Seoul, Ghana, Australian, Thai
• First letter of the first word of each sentence: Many universities accept IELTS.
• Abbreviations of English words: BP, MSc, IELTS

Rule #2

"I" before "E" except after "C"

• believe, friend
• receive, ceiling
• If the e+i are pronounced /ei/, the rule does not apply. For example: eight, neighbor
• Other exceptions: either, neither, leisure

Rule #3

Doubling consonants

When adding a suffix, sometimes we need to double the final consonant of a word. It shows that the vowel before it has a short sound.
For example: slim (short /i/ sound) and slime (long /a?/ sound).

• To keep the short /i/ sound in slim, double the last consonant before you add a suffix: slimmed, slimmer, slimmest.
• If the word ends in two consonants don’t double the final consonant: talent → talented
• If the word contains more than one syllable, only double the final consonant only if the last syllable is stressed:  occur → occurred
• This rule does not apply if the last syllable is not stressed: happen → happened, listen→ listened