SSC MTS · Bite-size lessons

Spelling / Misspelt Words

About 6 min · English Language and Comprehension · English

Time worked out from the lesson's 331 words at 150 words a minute, plus a minute for each question.

Spelling questions in SSC MTS Paper 1 test your ability to identify correctly or incorrectly spelt words from a set of options. Typically, you'll be given four words and asked to pick the one that is misspelt (or correctly spelt, depending on the question).

Key ideas

• Common confusion pairs: Words that sound similar but are spelt differently (homophones) or have similar spelling patterns often appear. Examples: stationery (paper) vs stationary (standing still), affect vs effect.
• Silent letters: Many English words have silent letters that students omit. Key patterns: Wednesday (silent d), receipt (silent p), condemn (silent n), rhythm (no vowel before m), psychology (silent p).
• Double consonants: Errors frequently occur with doubled consonants. Examples: accommodate (double c and double m), harass (one r, two s), necessary (one c, two s), occurrence (double c, double r).
• -ence vs -ance endings: Many students confuse these noun endings. Reference, existence, independence use -ence; assistance, attendance, performance use -ance. The base verb often gives a clue (refer→reference, assist→assistance).
• -able vs -ible suffixes: Both mean "capable of" but follow different patterns. Generally, if the root is a complete word, use -able (comfort→comfortable). Latin-derived stems take -ible (visible, terrible, possible).

Watch out for

• Adding unnecessary double letters → Fix: Double consonants usually appear in specific positions. Don't randomly double letters. Check: harassment is one r + two s, not two r + two s.
• Confusing -ance/-ence endings by guessing → Fix: Learn common words in groups. Notice that attend→attendance, refer→reference. Verb forms often hint at the correct suffix.
• Spelling "definitely" as "definately" → Fix: Remember it comes from "definite" + ly. There's no 'a' in "definite," so none in "definitely."

Quick reference

• Accommodate — double C, double M every time
• Silent letters: Wednesday, receipt, condemn, psychology, rhythm
• Double trouble: occurred, harass, embarrass, unnecessary
• -ence not -ance: reference, existence, independence
• IE exceptions: weird, their, seize, height

Check yourself: 3 questions

This lesson is cut from the topic's note, not rewritten. Fact-checked on 21 Oct 2026: an AI-assisted check of this note against cited sources; the errors it found were corrected that day. Some errors may remain. The questions are from Shishya's validated question bank.

Read the full noteFlashcards for this topic