TEAS spelling rules: doubling, endings, plurals and sound-alike words

Where spelling sits on TEAS 7

ATI's TEAS 7 content outline splits English and language usage into three areas. Conventions of standard English has 12 scored questions and three objectives: use conventions of standard English spelling, use conventions of standard English punctuation, and use correct sentence structures. ATI does not say how many of the 12 are spelling, so treat spelling as a share of that block rather than a section of its own.

The whole English section is 37 questions in 37 minutes, 4 of them unscored, according to ATI's exam details page. That pace leaves no time to sound out a word, so the goal is to recognize the correct form on sight. Rules help because one rule covers dozens of words you will never see on a list.

Rules that cover many words at once

Doubling. The US Government Publishing Office style manual states that a single consonant after a single vowel, at the end of a one-syllable word or a stressed final syllable, is doubled before a suffix that starts with a vowel: bag becomes bagging and transfer becomes transferred. When the stress is not on the last syllable it stays single in US spelling, so travel gives traveled and total gives totaled. If the stress moves to an earlier syllable in the new word, the consonant is not doubled: refer, reference.

Endings that sound alike. The same manual notes that only one word ends in sede (supersede) and only three end in ceed (exceed, proceed, succeed). Every other word of that kind ends in cede, such as precede and secede. For the ize and yze endings, words about loosening or separating take yze, as in analyze, and most others take ize, apart from a listed group that keeps ise, including advise, exercise, revise and supervise.

Plurals that break the pattern

For nouns ending in o, the GPO manual says to add s when a vowel comes before the o and es when a consonant does, with a list of exceptions such as avocados and banjos. Know the rule and expect the exceptions to be the ones an exam picks.

Science and health words often keep their Latin or Greek plurals, and the GPO list includes several you will meet in nursing school: criterion becomes criteria, crisis becomes crises, coccus becomes cocci, and datum becomes data. A question that pairs a singular verb with criteria, or writes crisises, is testing exactly this.

Sound-alike words and health terms

Purdue OWL's list of commonly confused words is a good drill set because each pair differs by meaning, not just letters: accept means to receive while except means other than; advise is the verb and advice the noun; conscious means awake while conscience is a moral sense; led is the past tense of lead; than compares while then marks time. Read the whole sentence before choosing, since the meaning decides the spelling.

The GPO spelling list also flags words that are frequently misspelled, and several are common in clinical writing: accommodate, embarrass, privilege, judgment, acknowledgment, hemorrhage, diarrhea and esophagus. It separates mucus, the noun, from mucous, the adjective. A practical drill is to write each word once from memory, check it against the list, and rewrite only the ones you missed.

Sources

ATI: ATI TEAS Version 7 Content Outline. Conventions of standard English has 12 scored questions and three objectives including spelling

ATI: TEAS Exam Details. English and language usage section is 37 questions in 37 minutes, 4 unscored

U.S. Government Publishing Office Style Manual (2016), Chapter 5: Spelling. Doubled consonant rule, sede/ceed/cede endings, ize/yze/ise rule, plurals of o nouns and irregular plurals, list of frequently misspelled words

Purdue OWL: Spelling, Common Words That Sound Alike. Meanings of accept/except, advise/advice, conscious/conscience, lead/led, than/then