I agree the 3 holed vent thingies are hard to adjust just right, especially when hot. A gloved hand can't do the fine tuning needed ...and no glove or hot pad means you probably will get burnt.
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OT but the i before e except after c rule ....I do remember learning it with exceptions but didn't realize how many exceptions there were. You guys prompted me to google it and Wiki came through with a decent answer:
Way more than you ever wanted to know on this subject I'd guess.
"I before E, except after C" is a mnemonic device devised to help students remember how to spell certain words in the English language. It means that, in words where i and e fall together, the order is ie, except directly following c, when it is ei. Examples:
* ie in words like siege, friend, thief
* ei in words like ceiling, receive, deceive, conceit
However, the rule, in its short form as above, has many common exceptions, such as species, science, sufficient, ancient, society (where ie follows c) or seize, weird, theism, weight, protein, sovereignty, foreign, vein, feisty, kaleidoscope, being, and neighbour "their" (where ei is not preceded by c). More exceptions are listed below. Various augmentations to the rhyme have been proposed to handle these exceptions.
Several other alternative versions to the basic mnemonic have been proposed to account for the numerous exceptions to the rule. One alternative version includes:[6]
i before e except after c
or when sounded like a
as in neighbor and weigh
Exceptions to this version include gneiss, neither, height, leisure and weird. Further exceptions including ancient, efficient and species can also be covered by the addition of the line
"drop this rule when -c sounds as -sh".
An additional version is:
i before e except after c
unless you're being weird
Another version, particularly common in Britain is:[6]
when the sound is ee ([iː])
it's i before e except after c
or [4]
in ei and ie
when sounded as e
put i before e
except after c
or
"i" before "e" except after "c" when the sound is long "e"
The most frequent everyday failures of this version include weird, weir, seize, caffeine, protein (here -ein(e) was originally pronounced [iː.ɪn]), and, for those who pronounce the initial vowel sound [iː], either and neither. Inflections of words ending -cy (fancied, policies etc.) are exceptions for those with happy tensing accents, who pronounce the -cies/-cied endings [siz]/[sid]rather than [sɪz]/[sɪd].
Few common words have the cei spelling handled by the rule: verbs ending -ceive and their derivatives (perceive, deceit, transceiver, receipts, etc.), and ceiling. Many words spelled with ei are pronounced [iː] in America but not Britain (e.g. sheikh, leisure, either have [eɪ], [ɛ], [aɪ] respectively). In these cases, the British pronunciation is a corollary of the British "rule" (i.e., when spelt ei, the pronunciation cannot be [iː]).
Another mnemonic device that takes the form of a non-rhyming sentence has been used to help students remember a list of common exceptions to the rule: "Let neither financier inveigle the sheikh into seizing either species of weird leisure." This sentence contains both "ie after c" exceptions and "e before i" exceptions.
[edit] Exceptions
This section lists exceptions to the basic form; many will not be exceptions to the augmented forms. The word oneiromancies (divination from the meanings of dreams) breaks the rule twice, in both ways.
[edit] cie
Of the 319 words in the The Collaborative International Dictionary of English that contain a combination of cie or cei, 212 words (66%) are exceptions to the rule.[7]
Some groups of words have cie:
* species and specie
* Inflections of words ending -cy (fancied, policies, etc.)
* science and related words (conscience, prescient, etc.)
* Other words ending -cient -ciency (ancient, efficiency, etc.)
o deficiencies, efficiencies, sufficiencies have cie twice each.
* Suffixes -ier or -iety after a root ending in -c (financier, glacier, society, etc.)
[edit] ei not preceded by c
Many words have ei not preceded by c:
* Chemical names ending in -ein or -eine (caffeine, casein, codeine, phenolphthalein, phthalein, protein, etc.)
* Many proper names (Keira, Breidi, Keith, Leith, Neilla, Sheila, Neil, Ashleigh, Heidi, etc.)
* Scottish English words (deil, deid, weill, etc.)
* Prefixes de- or re- before words starting with i (deindustrialize, reignite, etc.)
* Inflection -ing after verbs those ending in e which do not drop the e (being, seeing, swingeing, etc.)
In the following lists, words are grouped by the sound corresponding to ei or eir in the spelling, as listed at Wikipedia:IPA for English. An asterisk* after a word indicates the pronunciation implied is one of several found. Most derived forms are omitted; for example, as well as seize, there exists disseize and seizure.
/eɪ/
these exceptions are excluded by the American version: abseil, beige, cleidoic, deign, dreidel, eight, feign, feint, freight, geisha, gleization, gneiss, greige, greisen, heigh-ho*, heinous*, inveigh, inveigle*, neigh, neighbo(u)r, obeisance*, peignoir*, reign, rein, seiche, seidel, seine, sheikh*, skein, sleigh, surveillance, veil, vein, weigh. (This sound is never pronounced ie).
/ɛər/
these exceptions are excluded by the American version: heir, their. (This sound is never pronounced ier)
/iː/
these exceptions are the only ones that slip through the strictest interpretation of the British version: either*, heinous*, inveigle*, keister, leisure*, monteith, neither*, obeisance*, seize, seizin, sheikh*, teiid (see also the chemical names such as caffeine listed above).
/ɪər/
these exceptions may slip through the British version: weir, weird. (This sound may also be pronounced ier, as in pierce.)
/aɪ/
eider, either*, einsteinium, feisty, heigh-ho*, height, heist, kaleidoscope, leitmotiv, neither*, Rotweiller, seismic, seismograph, stein, zeitgeist. (This sound may also be pronounced ie, as in pie.)
/ɨ/
counterfeit, foreign, forfeit, reveille*, sovereign, surfeit
/ɛ/
heifer, leisure*, peignoir*. (This sound may also be pronounced ie, as in friend.)
/æ/
reveille*
e and i in separate segments
albeit, atheism, deify, deity, herein, onomatopoeia