Thursday, September 14, 2006

Friends? Freinds?

I've been travelling this week, and am about to head to Chicago to meet the group attending this weekend's fitness camp with Tony Horton. I'll add some photos to the blog when I get back, but in the meantime, since it's back to school time I wanted to share something exceptionally exciting and relevant with you:

I learned a trick this week at the annual Electronic Retailing Association convention that's trivial to some, but based on the reactions I am hearing from many people, also quite a relief... Ok. here it is:

The correct "I-before-e-except-yada-yada" order of "i" and "e" for the word "friend", is, in fact, "i" before "e". As in "friends".

You may have known that, but I have had such a hard time remembering if that word falls into the "sounding like A" category, that I actually avoided using the word (and my social calendar reflects as such.)

The breakthrough though is this memory trick; "friend to the end"... the "e" goes at the end to spell it - "fri - end"!

Do you get it? I swear, I feel like I got a new puppy.

Now if I could just remember how many "L"s in "traveling". (one)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

OMG I hate that rule too! I only learned the first part of it..."i" before "e" except after "c"...so neighbor, weigh, etc. were always my problem words! Then a friend told me about the the expect for when it sounds like "a" part!

It also reminds me of a time when I said "let's flush this idea out" in a high powered meeting! Thank goodness everyone important laughed! Apparently the phrase is "lets flesh this idea out"

Thanks for sharing!

G-Mama

Anonymous said...

Hey, Carl. According to Webster's dictionary, "traveling" can have one "l" or two. So you can be traveling alone or travelling as a pair!

Another one some people have problems with is "desert" vs. "dessert". My grade school teacher told us to remember dessert has two "s"s because you always want a second helping!

Anonymous said...

That's why my computor has spell check so that I don't have to remember such things, and here is something else to think about

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in
waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht
the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae.
The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm.
Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but
the wrod as a wlohe.

Fcuknig amzanig huh?

psyknife said...

Can't wait to see your Chicago pictures, Carl!

PS - for the first time EVER I received a shipping notification in the mail from my Beachbody order... with a tracking number and all!!! Huzzah!!!! I've been requesting these forever!