Glossary (Version 8.4)

A production of legible, correctly formed letters by hand or with the assistance of writing tools, for example, pencil grip or assistive technology.

The most common words used in written English text. They are sometimes called ‘irregular words’ or ‘sight words’. Many common or high-frequency words in English cannot be decoded using sound–letter correspondence because they do not use regular or common letter patterns. These words need to be learnt by sight (for example, ‘come’, ‘was’, ‘were’, ‘one’, ‘they’, ‘watch’, ‘many’).

A word identical in pronunciation with another but different in meaning (for example, ‘bear’ and ‘bare’, ‘air’ and ‘heir’).

A composite text resulting from a mixing of elements from different sources or genres (for example, ‘infotainment’). Email is an example of a hybrid text, combining the immediacy of talk and the expectation of a reply with the permanence of print.