When to use c or k
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An eight-year-old asked me the other day, “When do I use the letter C and when do I use K?”. She’s a pretty good reader but her spelling is not so great, which is why she was referred to me.
I got her to answer her own question by doing the following:
C or K at word beginnings (before vowels)
I wrote out some words like the following ones in two columns (I am in the habit of underlining letter groups that are working together to represent a single sound, so I will do this here too):
| C | K |
| car
cash cat clap clock club coin corn cot crab cross crow cup cut cue |
keep
keg Ken kerb key kid kind king kiss kit Kylie Kym skill skin sky |
Then I gave her a highlighter pen and asked her to highlight all the letters “C” and “K”, plus the next letter:
| C | K |
|
car cash cat clap clock club coin corn cot crab cross crow cup cut cue |
keep keg Ken kerb key kid kind king kiss kit Kylie Kym skill skin sky |
Then I asked her to go down the list and write the letters following the letter “C” at the bottom of that column. She wrote: “A, L, O, R, U”.
Then I asked her to write the ones that follow a letter “K” at the bottom of that column and she wrote “E, I, Y”.
Then she summarised this as something like “When we’re writing the sound “k”, if the next letter is E, I or Y, we usually use a letter K. Otherwise we usually use C”.
Then I asked her to consider what would happen if we put “C” instead of “K” in the words in the right column, e.g. “ceep” not “keep”, “cing” not “king”, and she read these with a “s” as in “city”, “cell” and “cyanide”, not the sound “k”.
We summarised this as, “When the letter C has E, I or Y next, the sound is ‘s'” (the only spelling rule that works in English!).
As always in English, which steals words from all round the world, there are a few words which don’t stick to the “K is followed by E, I or Y” pattern, like “Kate”, “skate”, “koala”, “kangaroo”, “Korea” and “Kung Fu”. People who make alphabet posters and other alphabet-teaching materials have an annoying tendency to include lots of these words, and obscure the KE, KI, KY pattern. They also like to include the “n” sound spelt “KN” in words like “knight” and “knot”, adding further to the confusion.
C or K at word endings (after vowels)
Here I wrote out four lists of words like these:
| CK | K | K | C |
| back
buck deck dock duck hack mock muck neck Nick pack peck pick tack tick tuck yuck |
ask
book dark fork hawk milk oak park pink shriek soak speak spook stork sulk task week |
bake*
bike broke cake duke fake hike joke lake like make nuke sh ake smoke spike take woke |
classic
clinic comic critic epic garlic havoc logic mollusc music panic picnic relic topic traffic tragic tropic |
* When I’m handwriting, I draw a little loop under words with “split” vowel spellings (or “bossy e”) to show that the two vowel letters are acting as a unit to represent a single sound. But I can’t do that when typing, so you’ll have to imagine little loops joining the underlined vowel letters in column 3.
I asked the student to highlight all the CK”, “K” and “C” spellings. Then we eyeballed the lists and deduced:
- That “ck” is an ending spelling in short words or syllables that end with “ack”, “eck”, “ick”, “ock” and “uck”. It is used after one-letter vowel spellings, with very few exceptions (I can only think of ”hoick’, ‘arcked’, ‘zincked’ and ‘talcked’). She highlighted the preceding single vowel letters, so this pattern really stood out.
- Some longer words like “panic” and “traffic” just end in “C” not “CK”, and I added that there are a few little, not-very-common words, like “arc”, “disc” (the circular shape, not the computer thing, which is spelt “disk”) and “talc” that also fit in column 4, and added them.
- We tend to use the letter “K” at word and syllable endings the rest of the time, i.e. after consonants (as in “ask” and “pink”) and other vowel spellings, including “bossy e” vowels like “bake” and “like”.
I wrote the words “brake”, “fake”, “like”, “trike” and “puke” out in pencil, then asked her to change the “K” to a “C” and see what happened. This changed them into “brace”, “face”, “lice”, “trice” and “puce”. The student was able to tell me this was because the letter “C” sounds like “s” when a letter “E” is next. Good girl.
When we’d finished, she picked up the sheets of paper on which we had done this working-out, and asked, “Can I keep these?”. Nice one. Of course. I hope she’s going to play teacher to a friend or younger sibling, who’s confused about when to use C or K.
Feel free to give this lesson about when to use C or K to anyone who might find it helpful.
52 responses to “When to use c or k”
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Impressive, thank you
Beautiful and simple to grasp.
Very helpful. Thanks. I agree with the method – student spots the pattern versus being told the rule.
Thank you. I love the investigation process too.
oh i love this!!
will use in my class – thank you! It makes so much more sense to allow kids to investigate the rule for themselves rather than just tell them.
Thank you so so much.. God bless
Thank you as a parent I appreciate you posting this. It made helping my daughter so much easier
Thank you very much!!!!
I’ve just come across this while planning a lesson about this exact topic. Thank you very much!
Excellent, very thorough. Thank you.
Thank you so much I am going to save this for future. My son is 4yrs old and he knows sounds and started forming 3 letter words and he gets confused in c k sound, for now i tell cat C and Kite K. Do you have any suggesation how to teach him, as he does not know vovels.
Dear Krupa, sorry for the delay in replying, I have been snowed under. If you follow any good systematic synthetic phonics program, it will introduce letters then letter combinations in a logical way, but please also remember that your son is only four, so helping him learn oral language via lots of pretend play, stories, games and just chatting is probably the highest priority. Children who start school recognising letters, rhyming and identifying first sounds are in a good position to learn literacy but he doesn’t need to be able to read and spell before he starts school, in some ways that makes the teacher’s job harder as they are having to occupy him while they teach the others things he already knows.
This is a lovely explanation. Helps one to spell correctly. Thanks for sharing.
Wow! Very good practical ideas to foster independence and for children to be able to work out the rule as oppose to you just giving them the rule. I’m all for it. Thank you.
Great lesson. Thank you so much for sharing.
Thank you …it is very helpful…I also want to know about how to use c and s letters …like circular…not sircular…. how to explain in easy way
Dear Taruna, I’m not sure there is always an easy way to explain when to use c and when to use s, but sometimes these can be linked to meaning to provide a clue e.g. circle, circus, cycle, cyclone are all c and all to do with circles. But sometimes it’s just a case of learning which words have c, and the rest have the standard s. Alison
Why EKG for ECG?
Thank you so much…… I love your method to explain the difference. really helpful to all parents, Teachers, and students
Thank you for your explanation. My 5 year old is starting spelling and the 2 words we came across these last 2 weeks are kit and cub. She knows all her letters and is reading already. The question came up when she has to spell the word by sounding it out. It looks in her instance at the beginning of a word if it’s an i, e , or y its a k. and if its an a, o or u its a c. Examples cub, cat, cake, cape, cap, cup, cot, cove, cop, and then kite, kit, kill, keep, key, kilt. Does that sound right? Did think this would come up so early?
Hi Shannon, sorry for slow reply, I have been snowed under. Yes, if we put a letter c before e, i or y, the sound is “s” as in cent, city and cycle. We have to use a letter k to spell the sound /k/ before e, i or y, as in Kent, kitty and kybosh. Hope that makes sense. Alison
Hi, Thanks for your c,k,and ck rules… But can you help me to find how c in Word ‘object’ and ck in jacket???
Yes, ck is used for syllable-final /k/ sounds in one-syllable words with a “short” vowel like “back”, “neck”, “sick”, “lock”, “duck”, and also in the first syllable of words like “jacket”, “cricket”, “pocket” and “bucket”.
If the last two sounds of the syllable are /k/ then /t/ we typically use ct, as in “fact”, “sect”, “evict”, “concoct” and “duct”, unless it’s a past tense verb/past participle, in which case we use cked as in “backed”, “wrecked”, “clicked”, “blocked”, “ducked”. Hope that makes sense! Alison
Is vedic or vedik which is correct?????
Hi Shivani, I have always thought “vedic” but I’m not an expert on this word, so that could be wrong.
my sister think that taco is spelled with a k and she is in seventh grade im in fith grade and i know that it is spellled with an c not an k so someone please help me and prove my point
Dear Bill, you know you can use a dictionary to check how words are spelt? Tacos come from Mexico, where they speak Spanish, and Spanish doesn’t use the letter K much. Even in words borrowed from other languages, they often change K to a C. When I lived in Mexico years ago I was surprised to find that the Spanish word for “kangaroo” is “canguro”. Hope your sibling rivalry with your sister resolves into warm and lifelong loving friendship. All the best, Alison
Hi
I want to know how to explain to my 6 year old when a word begins with kn or n .
Hi Riddhi, the spelling kn is used in words from Old English in which the /k/ was pronounced before the /n/. There isn’t a “rule” to tell you which words they are, but the main base words are in this list: http://www.spelfabet.com.au/spelling-lists/sorted-by-sound/n/kn-as-in-know
This is a gem! Thanks
Why does camera pronounced with k instead of s
Because the letter C is followed by A in “camera”, not E, I or Y as in “cent”, “city” or “cyclone”
Thanks
Then why is Kashmir not written as cashmir and kangaroo not written as cangaroo?
Because English has spelling patterns, not hard-and-fast rules. Kashmir is from Sanskrit and kangaroo is an Anglicized version of a Guugu Yimidhirr word, and loan words from other languages tend to stick less closely to the patterns we get from the main base languages of English. Some other words for Australian wildlife (koala, kookaburra, quokka) use K where you’d ordinarily expect a letter C. Sorry about that, it wasn’t my idea.
Thanks for this great explanation. I am preparing a lesson on ck and k endings. There seem to be lots that have a ck in the middle that are more than 1 syllable. Do you suggest covering those at all? I am thinking of words like chicken, packet, bucket, attack, buckle. Lastly, do you suggest introducing it all in one go with younger kids or just sticking to the ck (after short vowel) and k (after a consonant) and leaving words that just have a c (picnic, music etc ) for later?
Hi Joanne, I’d just follow your teaching sequence, some of them do more one-syllable word work before starting on words of more than one syllable, and others bring in two-syllable words early. Whichever way you do it is fine I think, the main thing is to have an established teaching sequence and then stick to it. All the best, Alison.
why can’t we just have a language that has one symbol per one sound …is it really too much to ask have a logic in spelling, do I really have to learn 250+ different Letter combinations for one sound… let’s just spell how it sounds stop this retarded madness.
Because every language gets the orthography it deserves, and English orthography is a very efficient way to represent both sounds and meaningful word parts plus distinguish between homophones, though since it’s generally not taught well it’s poorly understood. If we had one spelling for every sound we would have no “act” in “action”, no “music” in “musician”, no “discuss” in “discussion” and so on, but once you know how it works it’s actually quite an elegant system.
Hello, dear author! Your lesson is helpful and interesting for me. Thank you! And also I have a question, how would you explain why we writing “c” not “k” in “cash”, “car”, etc.
We typically write C before back vowels and K before front vowels, and the reasons are complicated and historical, this History of English podcast is about this: https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/2012/07/17/episode-5-centum-satem-and-the-letter-c-2/
Why if click or clock with a and not klock or klick?
I am not sure I understand the question. We tend to use letter c before a, o and u (back vowels) and before r and l, but k before e, i and y. There are some common exceptions e.g. the name Kate, the word ‘skate’ which comes from Scandinavia, and some of Australia’s fauna e.g. kangaroo, koala, kookaburra. The reasons for this are complicated and I’m not sure I fully understand them yet, but if you’re interested you could start with this History of English Podcast: https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/2012/07/17/episode-5-centum-satem-and-the-letter-c-2. All the best, Alison
Yes thank you. You answered to my question and I found it elsewhere too. The consonant blends /cl/ and /cr/ will use c and not k. 🙂 hence it is click and not klick.
Thank you again.
Thank you for the clarification.
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Another reason ck isn’t used in words like talc is that the /k/ has to be RIGHT after the short vowel. If there’s another consonant there we can’t add ck because ck can’t be clustered with another consonant.
Good point, though there are a tiny few exceptions. I have added a sentence to this post to make that clearer: “It is used after one-letter vowel spellings, with very few exceptions (I can only think of ”hoick’, ‘arcked’, ‘zincked’ and ‘talcked’).” THANKS! Alison
Mam could you please tell me the different sounds of gh and how they should be used
Have a look at this page on my website: http://www.spelfabet.com.au/spelling-lists/sorted-by-spelling. The spelling gh is listed as a grapheme in its own right, as in the words ‘ghost’ and ‘laugh’, but it’s also part of the spellings ‘aigh’ as in ‘straight’, ‘eigh’ as in ‘eight, height, Leigh’, ‘igh’ as in ‘night’, ‘ough’ as in ‘bought, dough, drought, through, thorough’ and ‘augh’ as in ‘caught’. It mostly represented a sound we don’t say any more in Old English (a voiced /h/ type sound), and the spelling was retained after it stopped being pronounced, or shifted forward in the mouth to become /f/.
I heard a person on Tictok say she had her kids draw a C and turn it into a cat by using lc a for eyes, lc o for a nose and lc u for a mouth then closing it up and giving it whiskers. She then drew a K and turned it into a kite by adding lines to the right side to form a diamond putting a lc t in the center from too to bottom and adding a I on the lower left of the center lines and an e on the lower right side. Which btw would spell kite of course, but it should the kids if ot has a.o, or u it would follow a c and I, or e would follow a k.
Nice one! Alison