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 sounded-like-A. He found 14 words with "i-e" in separate syllables, and 2 with "e-i" in separate syllables. This left 11 "irregular" words: 3 with "cie" ("ancient, conscience, efficiency") and 8 with "ei" ("either, foreign, foreigner, height, leisure, neither, seize, their"). Wheat concluded, "If it were not for the fact that the jingle of the rule makes it easy to remember (although not necessarily easy to apply), the writer would recommend that the rule be reduced to '"I" usually comes before "e",' or that it be discarded entirely".