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How to spell formation

hear itfor·ma·tion/fɔr'meɪʃən/nounSchwa and roots

What it means: A particular arrangement or pattern of people or things.

In a sentence: The birds flew in a V formation across the sky.

The part people get wrong

Often misspelled as formasion or formetion.

Same family: form, reformation, deformation, geological-formation. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: Formation comes from Latin 'formatio', from 'formare' meaning 'to shape' and 'forma' meaning 'shape' or 'appearance.' In geology, the term was adopted to describe rock units that share a recognizable shape, structure, and origin.

Patterns it uses: -tion, -sion or -cian?

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