[Info-vax] Long uptime cut short by Hurricane Sandy

[AEF]

On Feb 14, 1:46 am, Paul Sture <nos... at sture.ch> wrote:
> In article
> <910855dc-f787-4b02-9b0f-befad67e2... at fn10g2000vbb.googlegroups.com>,
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>  AEF <spamsink2... at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > On Feb 12, 4:50 pm, hel... at astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---
> > undress to reply) wrote:
> > > In article
> > > <30cb251a-22f9-43a5-84c5-741ea5209... at hl5g2000vbb.googlegroups.com>, AEF
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> > > <spamsink2... at yahoo.com> writes:
> > > > disc - CD, frisbee (flying disc), phonograph record, DVD, videodisc,
> > > > optical disc (or disk), abbreviation for discount, disc brakes, Blu-
> > > > ray disc
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> > > > disk - disk drive; image of a celestial body as visible in a
> > > > telescope, or in the case of the Sun or Moon, also in the naked eye,
> > > > and in the case of a star, which is something too small to be seen as
> > > > a normal disk, a diffraction disk (in naked eye or telescope); slipped
> > > > disk in the backbone
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> > > Yes, there are rules, which vary from country to country.  But what ARE
> > > the rules?  Can you describe them without examples?
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> > The only hard and fast rule of English spelling that's guaranteed to
> > work all the time is the following variant of the i before e rule:
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> > It's i before e, except when it's e before i. :-D
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> "Weird" is quite aptly the exception to the "i before e, except after c"
> rule.
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> --
> Paul Sture

How could it not be? But it's not an exception to _my_ version of it!

OK, here's an updated version of something I once wrote for Wikipedia
"i before e" article talk page, with a bonus section tacked on at the
end:

There are lots of exceptions:
species, sufficient, efficient, proficient, coefficient, conscience --
'ie' after 'c' so as to make c be pronounced as 'sh' instead of 'see',
which would be 'ei' after 'c', as in receive.

"Weird" almost *has* to be an exception, and "foreign", too. Easy!

Plurals with y --> ies: fancies, legacies, consistencies,
contingencies, lunacies, prophecies, etc.

vein -- falls under "or when pronounced as 'a', as in neighbor or
weigh." So it's 'ei' and part of the rule. More: beige (but pronounced
a as in weigh. hey, weigh!), deign, neighbor, reign

If there are any exceptions to these easy exceptions, please post.

BTW, I prefer

'I' before 'e', except when it's 'e' before 'i'.

Hard exceptions:

crustacean (c as sh without being ci as in efficient!), Crustacea,
crustaceous

protein
caffeine
seize, seizure
foreign
weird
names ending in stein
stein
forfeit
surfeit
counterfeit
leisure
either, neither (could be pronounced with an "I" sound)
feisty, heifer, height, meiosis, sleight (all pronounced with an "I"
sound)
keister
reive

AEF