date. An 1834 manual states a similar rule in prose; others in 1855 and 1862 use different rhymes. Many textbooks from the 1870s on use the same rhyme as Laurie's book. The restriction to the "long e" sound is explicitly made in the 1855 and 1862 books, and applied to the "I before E except after C" rhyme in an 1871 manual. Mark Wainwright's FAQ posting on the alt.usage.English newsgroup characterises this restricted version as British. The restriction may be implicit, or may be explicitly included as an extra line such as "when the sound is e" placed before or after the main part of the rhyme. A longer form excluding the "long a" sound is found in Rule 37 of Ebenezer Cobham Brewer's 1880 Rules for English Spelling, along with a list of the "chief exceptions": The following rhymes contain the substance of the last three rules : — i before e, Except after c, Or when sounded as "a", As in neighbour and weigh. "Dr Brewer" is credited as the author by subsequent writers quoting this form of the rhyme, which became common in American schools. A Dictionary of Modern English Usage discusses "i before e except after c". Henry Watson Fowler's original 1926 edition called the rule "very useful", restricting it to words with the "long e" sound, stating further that "words in which that sound is not invariable, as either, neither, inveigle, do not come under it", and calling seize "an important exception". The entry was retained in Ernest Gowers's 1965 revision. Robert Burchfield rewrote it for the 1996 edition, stating 'the rule can helpfully be extended "except when the word is pronounced with "', and giving a longer list of exceptions, including words excluded from Fowler's interpretation. Robert Allen's 2008 pocket edition states, "The traditional spelling rule ' i before e except after c ' should be extended to include the statement 'when the combination is pronounced -ee- '". Jeremy Butterfield's 2015 edition suggests both "when ... pronounced -ee-" and "except when ... pronounced -ay-" as extensions to the rhyme, as well as listing various classes of exception. In 1932 Leonard B. Wheat examined the rules and word lists found in various American elementary school spelling books. He calculated that, of the 3,876 words listed, 128 had ei or ie in the spelling; of these, 83 conformed to I-before-E, 6 to except-after-C, and 12 to