Category talk:English words not following the I before E except after C rule

Discussions
For a discussion about the category, see Beer parlour, June, 2011. --Dan Polansky 10:19, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Dan Polansky's right in the discussion linked to above. The -cies forms should be dropped: The rule says "I before E except after C" but does not say "always E before I after C." The rule simply does not apply after C, where both orders are common. Words ending in -cies therefore don't violate the rule. Including them makes this list useless as a spelling aid, since they seem to make up the vast majority of entries currently in it (and I'd challenge anyone to produce evidence that -cies forms are frequently misspelled). Is there really a native English speaker out there who disagrees?

Agreeing etc.
It seems fatuous to include forms such as "agreeing" where it's simply a word that happens to end with an e that has been affixed with "ing" in a regular fashion.


 * How so? They are still counterexamples. Judging by the Internet, quite a few people mistakenly think that the I-before-E rule has no exceptions, so the more we can show, the better. (What this category is really useful for, I don't know.) Equinox ◑ 19:07, 4 August 2014 (UTC)


 * It seems the rule is meant to identify "exceptions" to some "normal" behavior (and often has the caveat "except when sounding like "a" as in "neighbor" and "weigh" -- and "inveigle" fits this additional constraint) but when asked to think of "a word" people rarely choose inflected forms, they tend to pick the infinitive or singular forms. As such, it implies there's something "unusual" about words like "reinvest" when it is perfectly regular. As I learned the rule as a child, it was only intended to describe where "ie" and "ei" were used as a digraph representing a diphthong. And in all cases the examples never crossed a morpheme boundary (though at the age people learn this rule, they wouldn't really know what a morpheme is) So it seems to me that morpheme-crossing "exceptions" really aren't exceptions at all. XaiaX (talk) 19:17, 4 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Quite so. —DIV (1.145.62.202 13:08, 15 August 2021 (UTC))

Ancient
I believe ancient should be added to the list.
 * The rule doesn't address such cases: it covers "cei", but says nothing about "cie". Chuck Entz (talk)


 * I disagree. If it rains "except on Wednesdays", then Wednesday has no rain. So: if it's I before E except after C, then C is not followed by IE. Equinox ◑ 21:03, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Society
I believe society should be added to the list.
 * The rule doesn't address such cases: it covers "cei", but says nothing about "cie".

Or when sounding like "A" as in neighbor and weigh
You sort of forgot that part. And there are apparently about 1,000 English words that break this so-called rule. http://www.ojohaven.com/fun/broken.rules.html 174.106.199.68 02:36, 7 July 2015 (UTC)


 * No, our page already specifically mentions that. Equinox ◑ 11:58, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Efficiency
I believe efficiency should be added to the list of exceptions. Additionally, it is probably a bad example of a noun ending in "-cy" since it is a counter example (contains "cie") without having to be pluralized. Perhaps Intricacy, Pharmacy or Delicacy would be better.


 * ✅ Equinox ◑ 21:02, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Codeine
I believe codeine should be added to the list of exceptions.


 * ✅ Equinox ◑ 21:02, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Nuclei, Theism, Species
I've realised "Nuclei" and "Nucleic" (as in deoxyribonucleic acid [DNA]) are also examples of words that violate the "i before e" rule, but I couldn't figure out how to add them to the original page. Please would someone do this? Also, "Atheism" and "Zootheism" seem redundant since they're variations on the word "theism" which is included. The list includes "Species", presumably on the grounds that it has "i" before "e" even after "c", but the rule only states that "i" must be before "e" unless they're following "c"; it doesn't say that if they are following "c" then "e" must be before "i". QueenDaisy (talk) 10:29, 2 March 2017 (UTC)


 * The way to do it is to edit the word's entry page and add this code at the bottom:  I have also just added an explanation to this category page to make it clear why e.g. "species" is included, because this seems to confuse a lot of readers. Equinox ◑ 21:01, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

The last word on the list, ǂKxʼauǁʼein, does not belong here
Why is ǂKxʼauǁʼein on this list? It does not belong, for obvious reasons, unless this list encompasses all languages, which it should not, as it is an English exceptions list Blondie0011 (talk) 20:59, 3 March 2019 (UTC)


 * The categorization is done automatically for any entry with an "English" section. ǂKxʼauǁʼein can be found as a loanword (loan-name) in English texts; it's obviously an extreme example, but it's on a spectrum with other English words derived from other languages' words or names (for texts, people, etc) like Aeneid, Abbe-Zeiss apparatus, Heimdall, etc. - -sche (discuss) 21:43, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

Misspellings (e.g. percieve)
I see the word "percieve" on the list. The definition of the word, on this very site, is "misspelling of perceive." OK, so first of all then, it is not a word. Second of all, it seems exactly contrary to the purpose of a spelling rule to include as examples (or counter-examples) actual MIS-spellings. —This unsigned comment was added by 130.204.9.193 (talk)&#x20;at 18:55, 22 April 2019 (UTC).

The guideline is incomplete
Spelling tends to follow guidelines rather than rule because of the many exceptions. However, the guideline can be made more trustworthy by rendering it as, "I before E except after C where the sound is /iː/. The sound is vital here as other sounds do not appear to fit this spelling guideline.

A rule is not a rule if there is one exception, let alone 6402 filling 200 pages.

This category says it is English words not following the rule, but it actually just seems to be "wiktionary entry titles with e before i in them". "Ancient Greece" is not a word, but a pair of words. "all-seeing" is two words, hyphenated.

https://albfreeman.wordpress.com/2015/04/19/i-before-e-except-after-c-and-66-other-exceptions/ gives 66 example exceptions but most of them the sound is not /iː/ or the word is not of English origin (e.g. Reich, zeitgeist), or it is a chemical name (protein, codeine, ...). A phonetic analysis of the words in this list would sift out the ones that do not have the /i:/ sound, and the remainder could be spilt into groups to identify rule refinements. SpareHeadOne (talk) 21:08, 18 August 2019 (UTC)


 * "Words" should probably read "terms" or "phrases": multi-word phrases do get entries here. People make the same complaint about our "word of the day" when it's a phrase. Equinox ◑ 21:48, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

RFD discussion: October 2020–December 2021
Based on this discussion, there seem to be serious doubts about the proper scope of this and, especially, whether there is any practical way of automatically populating it in a way that seems appropriate. The non-category content (the text at the top) might make a good appendix. i before e except after c might make a good "proverb" which could link to said appendix. DCDuring (talk) 18:40, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep - Rule is still being taught as mentioned at I before E except after C. As creator of the category, my thought was just to list all the exceptions to the rule, mostly to show how ridiculously many there are. I don't endorse trying to decide which terms are "junk", e.g. should glycophosphoprotein be listed or not? If this category is useful and not hurting, why delete? Facts707 (talk) 06:11, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
 * The main reason to delete it is that we can't get contributors to agree what should and what should not be in the category. We do not spend any resources on debunking, which seems to be the sole intent of the category. In any event the rule has a certain amount of utility in everyday English and the Wikipedia article covers the various versions of the rule and the exceptions to each. DCDuring (talk) 00:37, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It seems a few users have stumbled across this category and suggest various programming hacks because apparently they think the list is too long for their liking. Seems like a poor reason to delete. If the list is too long for someone, they should probably move along to a shorter category such as Category:Gestures. It doesn't take long to browse this category and obtain a good general idea of the exceptions. Just because the list is too long for most people to memorize does not mean it is not useful. Cheers, Facts707 (talk) 03:25, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete this category and "Category:English words following the I before E except after C rule". There are so many exceptions to the rule, and so much difficulty deciding whether it is appropriate for a word to be in the categories or not, that I doubt the categories serve much purpose. — SGconlaw (talk) 10:14, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
 * This category would be useful if it only included words in which the "ie" was pronounced /i/, which is the only time there is an actual difficulty in figuring out the spelling. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 02:40, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I wonder how that can be done. It would seem to mean that both the pronunciation, presumably in the one or more IPA templates (if they exist}, and the spelling (in the headword template} would have to be read for the categorization work as you would wish it. I don't think things work that way, certainly not without a lot more resource use on each loading of the entry. If the bit of irrelevancy is to be kept, wouldn't it make more sense for this to be hard-coded once in a while (once a year, once a quarter, once a month) as the result of an analysis by an offline Python or Perl program? I don't think it would be too hard to find recent new entries that had "ie" or "ei" in them so the hard categorization could be added for new entries manually, online, should a user want the categories to be more up to date than would they would be with only a periodic offline run against the XML dump. DCDuring (talk) 05:06, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I think hardcoding it once and then adding entries manually thereafter would be good enough. I can't imagine there are that many words that are exceptions to the more narrow rule. The category could have a note at the top explaining the more general exceptions (ei spelling when pronounced /eɪ/, order remaining the same when crossing morpheme boundaries, etc.). So many people learn this rule that I do think it has a use, just not in its current form (note that the category currently contains "words" like !!). Andrew Sheedy (talk) 06:16, 1 November 2020 (UTC)


 * If kept it should absolutely be purged of all multi-word combinations. It makes some sense to include "science", "deficiency", and "ancient", but none at all to include Academy of Sciences, acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or Ancient Church of the East. I would perhaps split out the words which disobey the rule for having an "ei" from those that disobey it by having an "ie after c". Also, I recall that the full rule says "or when sounding like A, as in neighbor or weigh", which also seems like a basis for excluding from this category (but perhaps for having a category for "words with an 'ei' pronounced as a long 'a'". bd2412 T 06:05, 1 November 2020 (UTC)


 * While I 99% agree with this, there are occasional multi-word phrases where the words do not exist alone (e.g. various whatever-ic acids. Technically we might want those to categorise. Rather unimportant though. Equinox ◑ 22:09, 17 August 2021 (UTC)


 * In its present form, i.e. swamped with auto-generated junk, Delete. If anyone can figure out an automated way to limit the list to "sensible" entries, or cares to go through and add/retain the "sensible" ones by hand, provided we can agree what is "sensible", then I could live with it. Mihia (talk) 10:30, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete both. More trouble than they're worth. —Mahāgaja · talk 11:33, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete as useless in their current form. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 11:55, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep both categories, disable automatic generation, then repopulate both from scratch manually. That will get rid of all the rubbish. The result? Much more useful and much slimmer categories. DonnanZ (talk) 12:00, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Not only that, any word included in the categories by manual editing could be easily removed if another editor disagrees with its inclusion. DonnanZ (talk) 12:23, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Changed to delete, see 2 Jan 2021. DonnanZ (talk) 18:46, 2 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep if you can remove all the false positives (where the "i" and "e" are not directly next to each other). SemperBlotto (talk) 12:32, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Oh, are there many cases like that? I can't say I noticed any, though I have by no means read the whole list, life being of limited duration. Mihia (talk) 17:55, 1 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete both categories for now without prejudice against re-establishing, on a more selective basis, one or both categories with off-line dump-based population supplemented by manual categorization (possibly enhanced by tags inserted by entry filters). DCDuring (talk) 14:56, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete, not useful as too many exceptions. Benwing2 (talk) 02:51, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete, there are at least three versions of the rule; choosing one will confuse more readers than it enlightens. Regardless of which version might be the basis, an auto-populated category will have too many false positives and a manually populated category will have too many gaps. Copying and extending I before E except after C as an Appendix page would be OK. Jnestorius (talk) 10:41, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete Category:English words not following the I before E except after C rule, keep Category:English words following the I before E except after C rule. --Soumyabrata (talk • subpages) 13:08, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete both. There are too many exceptions for these categories to ever be worthwhile, except I guess for "look, the rule's completely wrong", which is increasingly starting to be common knowledge anyway, leading to the deprecation of the rule. Maybe an appendix would work better. &mdash; surjection &lang; &rang; 23:59, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete both, not useful as a category. Ultimateria (talk) 18:27, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
 * If there is no alternative solution, delete both, amending my vote above, now struck. DonnanZ (talk) 18:46, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
 * 11 votes to delete, about 2.5 to keep (I count User:BD2412's vote as a half-vote to keep since it's conditional). If no objections, I will delete this in a few days. Benwing2 (talk) 21:45, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * OK, I now see User:Soumyabrata's keep vote on one of the two, but 10 to 3.5 is still above the 2/3 criterion. Benwing2 (talk) 21:46, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I will not lose a wink of sleep if the category is deleted. bd2412 T 00:15, 21 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep (but already voted) - I wonder if we can somehow mark certain words as "base words" for this purpose and then list derivatives of that word in a subcategory? E.g. ancient, science, weight, being, protein, seism each have dozens of derivatives. Other words are proper nouns, e.g. Einstein, and they could be listed in a subcategory accordingly. That would cut the list down substantially. After a second look, I really don't think it's that bad. Cheers, Facts707 (talk) 03:26, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete IMO the rule does not exist. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 03:37, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep From Wikipedia: "The rule is very well known; Edward Carney calls it "this supreme, and for many people solitary, spelling rule"." You can not underestimate the degree of awareness of this rule among native English speakers. It will of course seem childish and silly to the big boys with their fancy pants elite educations and leisure time to write a dictionary, but to many of our fellows, this is one of the main things learned about the spelling of English language words. When you encounter the exceptions, the rule confuses you. Therefore, a category listing where we directly acknowledge: "hey sister, that word you are trying to spell does not conform to the rule every man woman and child has repeated to you" is helpful to the less educated reaches of the audience of Wiktionary- it serves to help them understand that someone has checked and this non-conformity to the rule is indeed the official spelling. Only the snootiest of the snooty will say "Oh dearest me, Wiktionary is above such a non-scientific listing dealing with a folk rhyme about spelling. Words are spelled as they are and deal with it- let them eat cake." There is an element of classism in it. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:56, 8 May 2021 (UTC), the People's Editor
 * There are at least two problems, though. (1) There are so many exceptions that it’s not much of a rule. (2) Our categories are filled with entries that the rule is arguably not supposed to apply to anyway, and so they are unhelpful to the “less educated”. — SGconlaw (talk) 08:28, 8 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your reply. (1) "There are so many exceptions that it’s not much of a rule." Sure, that's correct. But the point is not whether the rhyme is true. This is not Wiktionary's Mythbusters-style attempt to bust the rhyme and bring down the feudal patriarchy under the blinding light of science and reason. The point is that the rhyme is a significant cultural-linguistic touchstone and that it is inherently valuable for English speakers to be made aware that a word in this category is violating the rhyme. When I spell the word 'weird' I have sometimes been tempted to spell the word as 'wierd', but then I remember that the word is 'odd' in that it doesn't follow the rhyme's suggested spelling rule. The rule is a cultural-linguistic artifact which it is interesting to examine and explore the literal implications of. (2) "Our categories are filled with entries that the rule is arguably not supposed to apply to". Those words referred to should be removed if the rhyme isn't supposed to apply to it. A descriptivist dictionary of 21st century English and an ancient rhyme will naturally have a different idea of which words really constitute bona fide English language words . --Geographyinitiative (talk) 20:33, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
 * In my daily life, I just organically used the rule in the rhyme to correct a misspelling I had made- 'recieved' for 'received'. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 17:15, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Retain. I disagree with the proposal to remove this category, and believe that this is a useful category that should be retained. —DIV (1.145.62.202 13:01, 15 August 2021 (UTC))


 * Delete both. Svartava2 (talk) 10:25, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
 * It appears that the required consensus for deleting both categories has been achieved. Will it be possible to run a bot to remove the pages from these categories so that they can be safely deleted? —Svārtava [t•c•u•r] 13:27, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete both per SGconlaw, Benwing2 and surjection. --Fytcha (talk) 13:33, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Done. Benwing2 (talk) 01:44, 27 December 2021 (UTC)
 * @Benwing2 Category:English words following the I before E except after C rule also. —Svārtava [t•c•u•r] 02:28, 27 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Oops, done. We just need to delete the categories themselves now. Benwing2 (talk) 02:33, 27 December 2021 (UTC)


 * RfD-failed —Svārtava [t•c•u•r] 03:06, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

RFD discussion: October 2021
The whole argument on exceptions can be easily remedied if the rule is quoted correctly.

"I before e, except after c, when the sound is ee".

See how it now makes sense? Certainly during my school years there were only three exceptions to this rule weird being one, even though the sound is not really just we.
 * Do you mean the category? ·~   dictátor · mundꟾ  13:58, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Jeez, haven't we got rid of those categories yet?? Mihia (talk) 22:12, 16 October 2021 (UTC)