2016 Spellzone Blog Round Up

Happy New Year!

Whether you are a regular user of our site or someone who’s just signed up, we hope 2017 will be a great year for improving your spelling. If you’re feeling daunted, perhaps some of these spelling-related New Year’s resolutions might help.

In 2016, we launched a new spelling ability test to help users determine the best point to start our spelling course from. Here are some of our other favourite blog posts from over the year:

As always we looked pairs and groups of words which are easy to mix up, and we shared tips and tricks to help you remember when to use which word. This year we looked at: aisle vs. isle , affect vs. effect, coarse vs. course, cue vs. queue, adverse vs. averse, defuse vs. diffuse, tail vs. tale, draw vs. drawer, heal vs. heel, council vs. counsel, all together vs. altogether, rain vs. reign vs. rein, dear vs. deer, pore vs. pour, who’s vs. whose, born vs borne, dual vs. duel, cereal vs. serial, ascent vs. assent, and broach vs. brooch.
To help our users who are learning English, we continued looking at the definitions of popular idioms in the English language. In 2016, we looked at useful idioms for the world of business (part one and part two), idioms about keeping and spilling secrets, idioms and expressions about luck and chance, idioms about talking, idioms about the sea, idioms about travel and transport (part one and part two), idioms about baking, idioms about books and reading, idioms and expressions about the theatre, and Christmassy idioms.
In 2016 we had a look at the English language’s most famous spelling rule and its exceptions and how to spell the long /a/ sound, long /e/ sound, long /i/ sound, and long /o/ sound. We also shared tips for spelling words with silent letters, using capital letters, adding suffixes to change the meaning of a word, and forming abbreviations.
While exploring interesting aspects of the English language, we explored where our words for types of cloth originate from and learned what the correct plural of ‘octopus’ is. Our Word for Wednesday feature included the words renew, button, deal, mumuration, sugar, and health

What did you enjoy most on our blog last year, and what would you like to see more of this year? Which articles have you found the most useful? Do let us know so that we can make 2017’s articles the best we can. You can contact us via Facebook, Twitter and email, or by leaving a comment below. We would also love to hear what your 2017 spelling resolutions are.

Once again, from all the team in Spellzone, we hope you have a very happy new year!

31 Dec 2016
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2016 Spellzone Blog Round Up

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