I am speaking Anniversary Gregg in this comment.
-ish
I frequently need to write words to describe something. Colloquial words. For example blue-ish, green-ish, heavy-ish, etc. In longhand one can insert a dash if needed. In Gregg I have, so far, just used the sh, joined. Decipherable if the word ends in a consonant, but not a vowel. I wonder if it would be better to disjoin them. The possibility of confusion with -ship is small(ish!) Has anybody a guiding principle to suggest what to do? Perhaps I should put the small circle before sh, but I felt that would make it more complicated.
-ile
This is just the American-English divide. I came to terms with either/neither a long time ago (though it is still a bit of a jolt before writing e-th rather than i-th [that i being the diphthong i as in tile]). But I still write mobile (e.g. in mobile phone) using the long i diphthong: m-o-b-i-l rather than m-o-b-l. I know it’s longer but I can’t get it out of my head. Futile is another one. By the way is there a good abbreviation for “mobile phone” — they didn’t cater for that in the 1930s!.
-ed
I have seen other comments on this before, but do not remember an absolute answer — I suppose it is a matter of preference. But here are some examples of recent words I had a quandary over how to write:
(1) obeyed: obey is o-b-a. obeyed looks odd, and not immediately obvious if written o-b-a-d. It is clear when written o-b-a/t [I use a “-” to mean joined, and a “/” to mean disjoined] because, when reading, the word “obey” comes immediately to mind. But what are we ‘supposed’ to use?
(2) appeared: likewise “appear” comes easily to mind with a disjoind “t” (a-p-r/t), though possibly one may use a reversed “e” to write a-p-e-d (as one would in beard) but that looks odd.
(3) contracted: a word ending with an omitted character should form the past tense with the disjoined t. So why is “contracted” written k/k-t rather than k/k/t? After all, the prefix is contr, the “main” part “[a]ct” the t of which is omitted so the final “ed” should be a disoined t. But we are directed to join the final t (the -ed) to the k.
I know all this is all rather finicky, and Ill write it as it comes to me at the moment of writing, but it is always good to have a definite answer — even if I ignore it (as I will in “mobile”!).