The Spelling Gap in English

Abstract

Spelling is a major item on the topic of language gap. Since the 1950s, English spelling has been an attraction to scholars. What this implies is that there is need for increased research on rules of spelling in the language. This chapter examines how the rule for choosing between -tion and -sion works in a bid to render it more economical as one way of bridging the language gap. Specifically, it is demonstrated that base-words that take the t-form have a smaller set of conditions that can more easily be mastered than do those that take the s-form, thus forestalling the latter.