In particular, content words containing fewer than three phonemes may be augmented with letters which are phonetically redundant, such as ebb, add, egg, inn, bee, awe, buy, owe, etc.
Through to the seventeenth century, before English spelling was firmly settled, short forms for some content words did occur, such as eg (egg), ey (eye), lo (low), etc.
Conversely, poets alternated between short and long forms for function words, depending on whether they occurred on or off the meter.
[7] Some commentators have ascribed such a convention to John Milton,[8][9] although others suggest that it was unevenly implemented and clouded by intervention from the printer.
[5] English grammar is relatively flexible about converting words of one class to another,[11] allowing verbal uses such as to up the ante or nominal uses such as the ins and outs.