Word List

Short E Words

Short e is the sound at the start of egg and in the middle of bed, hen and net. It is the vowel children most often swap with short i, and it is the one with the fewest words of its own.

Short e is the sound you hear at the start of egg and in the middle of bed, hen and net. The mouth is only a little open and the lips are relaxed, which is what puts it so close to short i.

Short e is the thinnest of the five vowels, and the page says so rather than padding. It has four word families where short a and short u have six, and the set of words a young child knows that begin with short e is close to egg, end, elf, exit and elbow. Only egg has a picture worth using, which is why there is no start-of-word section below: those words are here, in this paragraph, and that is the honest amount of room they deserve.

What are the short e word families?

Short e has four families, -et, -en, -ed and -eg, and each has its own list and worksheets on the CVC words page.

Family	Words
-et	net, jet, pet, wet, get, let
-en	hen, pen, ten, men, den
-ed	bed, red, fed, led
-eg	leg, beg, peg

web is the odd one out and it is on this page anyway. It is an -eb word, and -eb is not a family worth teaching, because web is close to the only one a young child knows. It earns its place by being one of the most recognisable short e words there is.

The two sections below carry six words each, drawn across those families, so the ending changes as your child reads down the list rather than staying put. The first takes all four and web besides; the second takes the three that have a second word a young child knows.

Short e or short i?

These two get swapped more than any other pair, because your mouth barely moves between them. Pen and pin, ten and tin, bet and bit.

The fix is to read them together, not apart. A week of short e followed by a week of short i never makes your child choose between them, and choosing is the whole skill. The sort that does it lives on short i words, with its own worksheet, and this page does not carry a second copy of it.

How to practise short e words

Read them, then write them, then find them in a book. Say the sound before the word: /e/, then bed. Have your child read each word out loud before writing it, so the sheet practises reading rather than copying.

One vowel at a time, in a set order, is the point. That is what the National Reading Panel calls systematic phonics, and the panel found it “significantly more effective than instruction that teaches little or no phonics” across kindergarten through 6th grade.

Short e and long e

Long e says the letter’s own name, and short e is the one vowel with almost no silent-e twin to show it. Cap becomes cape and kit becomes kite, but them and theme is close to the only clean pair English offers for e.

That is not a gap in this page, it is a fact about the language, and silent-e words says the same thing on its own long-e section. Long e is usually spelled with two letters instead: ee in feet, ea in read.

Knowing both sounds for the same letter is a kindergarten expectation: Common Core (RF.K.3b) asks children to “associate the long and short sounds with the common spellings (graphemes) for the five major vowels”.

What are the first short e words to read?

Six words across every short e family there is, plus one. Bed is -ed, hen is -en, net and jet are -et, leg is -eg, and web is the odd one out: it is an -eb word, and -eb is not a family worth teaching because web is close to the only one a young child knows. Short e has four families where short a and short u have six, so this vowel takes six words to cover them rather than the one-per-family six the other pages manage.

Start here even if your child has done short a. Short e is a harder sound to hear than short a, not a harder word to read, so the difficulty is in the middle of the word rather than at either end. Say the word slowly, stretching the middle, before your child looks at it.

The picture sheets come first. Naming a picture and counting its sounds asks nothing of reading, so a child who cannot yet read bed can do the whole sheet and still be practising the thing that matters, which is hearing the e.

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Printables for First Short E Words

What are some more short e words?

Three of the same endings, a different letter in front. Pen, ten and men are -en, wet and vet are -et, and peg is -eg. The -ed family has no second word a young child knows, so this section does not force one.

Pen and ten are the two to slow down on, and not for the reason you would expect. They are not hard to read. They are the two short e words a child is most likely to read as pin and tin, because those are short i words they already know. If that happens, it is a listening problem rather than a reading one, and short i words has the sheet that fixes it.

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Printables for More Short E Words

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Mixed review: printables for the whole list

Every sheet below is built from the Short E Words above. No account, no email, no watermark. Start at the top and print one at a time. The sheets are in teaching order, and ten minutes on a single sheet is more valuable than working through a stack on autopilot.

What comes after short e words?

Short e is rarely the vowel a child is stuck on by itself. It is almost always short e against short i, so that is where to go next.

Short i words carries the pair, the sort and the explanation. If you only do one more thing after this page, do that one.
If the sound is the problem rather than the word, short vowel sounds has all five and how each is made, with a page of e-and-i pairs in its printable chart.
For more words with the same ending, the families are on CVC words: -et, -en, -ed and -eg.
Once every vowel is going, short vowel words mixes all five.

Long e is the other direction, and it is mostly spelled with two letters rather than a silent e. Silent-e words explains why e is the exception there too.

Frequently asked questions

What sound does short e make?

Short e is the sound at the start of egg and in the middle of bed, hen and net. The mouth is a little open and the lips are relaxed, which puts it very close to short i.

What are short e words?

Short e words are words where the letter e makes its short sound: bed, hen, net, leg, jet, web. Almost all of them put the e in the middle, because very few words a young child knows begin with short e.

What words start with short e?

There are not many, and that is worth knowing rather than working around. Egg, end, elf, exit and elbow is close to the whole set a young child would recognise, and egg is the one worth teaching the sound on.

Why does my child mix up short e and short i?

Because the mouth barely moves between them, so pen and pin sound nearly alike to a child still learning to listen. The fix is to read the two together rather than practise each alone, which is what the sort on the short i page does.

What is the difference between short e and long e?

A long e says the letter's own name. Short e is the sound in bed; long e is the sound in these and theme. Unlike the other four vowels, short e has almost no silent-e partner: them and theme is the one clean pair in English.

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