Roots inside long words

Many long English words are built from Greek and Latin parts. "Tele" means far, "graph" means writing, "phone" means sound: a telegraph writes far away, a telephone sounds far away.

Knowing a few parts lets a reader take a long word apart: "photograph" is light-writing, "biography" is life-writing. It turns a hard word into a puzzle.

Read a long word aloud slowly and look for a part you know. Ask what the rest might mean before you look it up.