When to use c or k

52 Replies

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.

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52 responses to “When to use c or k”

  1. T says:

    Impressive, thank you

  2. Dww says:

    Very helpful. Thanks. I agree with the method – student spots the pattern versus being told the rule.

  3. A says:

    Thank you. I love the investigation process too.

  4. Mel says:

    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.

  5. Asha says:

    Thank you so so much.. God bless

  6. natasha says:

    Thank you as a parent I appreciate you posting this. It made helping my daughter so much easier

  7. Sagar Nagane says:

    Thank you very much!!!!

  8. Matthew says:

    I’ve just come across this while planning a lesson about this exact topic. Thank you very much!

  9. jennifer says:

    Excellent, very thorough. Thank you.

  10. Krupa says:

    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.

    • alison says:

      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.

  11. Rebecca says:

    This is a lovely explanation. Helps one to spell correctly. Thanks for sharing.

  12. Christine Milton says:

    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.

  13. Rebecca Tomlinson says:

    Great lesson. Thank you so much for sharing.

  14. Taruna says:

    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

    • alison says:

      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

  15. Joh says:

    Why EKG for ECG?

  16. Vandana Nikam says:

    Thank you so much…… I love your method to explain the difference. really helpful to all parents, Teachers, and students

  17. Shannon says:

    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?

    • alison says:

      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

      • Thivya says:

        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???

        • alison says:

          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

  18. Shivani Yadav says:

    Is vedic or vedik which is correct?????

  19. bill says:

    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

    • alison says:

      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

  20. Riddhi says:

    Hi
    I want to know how to explain to my 6 year old when a word begins with kn or n .

  21. Deepa says:

    This is a gem! Thanks

  22. Jony Haji says:

    Why does camera pronounced with k instead of s

  23. Pushpa Hawargi says:

    Thanks

  24. Sweta says:

    Then why is Kashmir not written as cashmir and kangaroo not written as cangaroo?

    • alison says:

      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.

  25. Joanne says:

    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?

    • alison says:

      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.

  26. Gaelan says:

    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.

    • alison says:

      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.

  27. Helena says:

    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.

  28. Vidhi says:

    Why if click or clock with a and not klock or klick?

    • alison says:

      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

      • Vidhi says:

        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.

  29. Sharmila Bose says:

    Thank you for the clarification.

  30. […] image Source:When to use c or k | Spelfabet […]

  31. Kristy Genung says:

    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.

    • alison says:

      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 

  32. Vaishnavi says:

    Mam could you please tell me the different sounds of gh and how they should be used

    • alison says:

      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/.

  33. Sharon says:

    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.

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