To determine the utility of the commonly taught phonics rule "if the only vowel in a word is at the end of that word, it usually stands for a long sound," a study evaluated all of the single syllable entries in the "New Grolier Webster International Dictionary of the English Language." When the letter "y" was considered a vowel, 72 words were found of which 55% could be correctly pronounced using the rule. However, when all the cases in which "y" was the only vowel were discarded, the utility of the remaining 57 words was only 44%. Analysis of these 57 words revealed that 28 were words with a high frequency of use. Analysis of these words indicated that only half could be correctly pronounced when the rule was applied--a utility of 50%. These results suggest that the phonics rule at issue is highly misleading to children and should not be taught. (JD)