Of the other 27 only five are reading (grapheme-phoneme) rules, and only three of those concern vowel graphemes – they correspond to sections 11.2, 11.4 and 11.5 below. From 59 rules submitted McLeod set 32 aside ‘since they merely grouped words according to common suffixes’. For example, McLeod (1961, cited in Carney, 1994: 70-74) reported ‘the result of a survey to which 76 teachers in 28 Scottish schools contributed’. 11.1 Some historyĢ There is a long tradition of teachers looking for rules for pronouncing vowel graphemes, and almost as long a tradition of finding most of them unhelpful. For some rules covering the VC(C) part of CVC(C) monosyllables which could well be useful at a slightly later stage, see section A. 1 In this chapter I assess the reliability or otherwise of just five rules which purport to help children and others taking their first steps in reading to generate accurate pronunciations of vowel graphemes.