What the question looks like
Two formats appear in SBI papers. In the first, a sentence has four marked words and you identify the one that is misspelt (or choose All correct). In the second, five spellings of words are listed and you pick the correctly spelt one, or the incorrectly spelt one.
Step-by-step approach
- Read each marked word slowly, syllable by syllable. Speed is the enemy here; the eye "auto-corrects" familiar words.
- Check the trouble spots: double letters, ie/ei, silent letters, and endings such as -ible/-able, -ance/-ence, -ant/-ent.
- If the four words look right, choose All correct. Examiners include fully correct sentences on purpose.
Rules that help
- i before e, except after c (when the sound is "ee"): believe, achieve, but receive, deceive, ceiling.
- Doubling the final consonant: one-syllable and stressed-last-syllable words double before a vowel suffix: occur, occurred, occurrence; commit, committed, committee. Unstressed endings do not: benefit, benefited (British usage also accepts benefitted).
- Dropping silent e: maintain becomes maintenance (not maintainance); argue becomes argument.
- -able vs -ible: if the root is a full word, -able is common (acceptable, payable); if not, -ible is common (accessible, eligible, feasible). This is a guide, not a law.
Words commonly misspelt in exams
| Correct | Common wrong form |
|---|---|
| received | recieved |
| accessible | accessable |
| maintenance | maintainance |
| definitely | definately |
| embarrassment | embarassment |
| occasion | occassion |
| entrepreneur | entreprenuer |
| bureaucracy | beaurocracy |
| accommodate | accomodate |
| separate | seperate |
| millennium | millenium |
| questionnaire | questionaire |
| conscientious | concientious |
| privilege | priviledge |
Worked example
"The committee observed that the (A) maintainance of records at the (B) rural branches..." The noun from maintain is maintenance; the -ain changes to -en. The marked word with -ain- is the misspelt one.
Common traps
- British and American variants (honour/honor, cheque/check, instalment/installment) are both correct; SBI papers follow British spelling but rarely test variants.
- Words that look odd but are right: liaison, questionnaire, conscientious.
- Correctly spelt but wrongly used words (principal/principle, stationary/stationery) are a word-usage issue, not a spelling one. In a misspelt-word question, judge only the spelling.
How to practise
Spelling improves by writing, not by reading. Each week, take ten words from your error list, write each one three times while saying the syllables aloud (ac-com-mo-date), and test yourself the next day. Group words by their trap: double letters (committee, embarrass, occurrence), silent letters (debt, receipt, mortgage) and endings (-ance/-ence, -able/-ible).