Spelling Demons and ie/ei

Some words trip up even confident writers: conscience, definitely, separate, occurrence, embarrass, independent and millennium.

Break words into parts: con + science = conscience; definite + ly = definitely (not definately). Double letters often come from roots: occur + r + ence = occurrence; mill + enn + ium = millennium.

For ie/ei, the rhyme “i before e except after c” helps (receive, ceiling), but learn the exceptions: seize, weird, height, foreign and protein.

Spell-checkers do not catch everything, especially homophones and words that are real but wrong in context, so proofread your work slowly, word by word.