SHORT VOWELS are the vowel sounds you hear in the middle of words like

cat
bed
big
hot
mud

These sounds typically occur in a Consonant-Vowel-Consonant (CVC) pattern and they are marked with a breve, almost like a small u, above the letter (<a onClick="window.open('/olcweb/cgi/pluginpop.cgi?it=gif::::/sites/dl/free/0073131245/371461/short_a2.gif','popWin', 'width=61,height=86,resizable,scrollbars');" href="#"><img valign="absmiddle" height="16" width="16" border="0" src="/olcweb/styles/shared/linkicons/image.gif"> (0.0K)</a>, for example)Short vowels are usually represented by a single letter, but they may be represented by letter combinations in words such as head, plaid, and does.

LONG VOWELS are the vowel sounds you hear in the middle of words like

cake
heat
ride
road
cute

Long vowels are marked with a macron, or flat line, above the letter (<a onClick="window.open('/olcweb/cgi/pluginpop.cgi?it=gif::::/sites/dl/free/0073131245/371461/long_a2.gif','popWin', 'width=59,height=83,resizable,scrollbars');" href="#"><img valign="absmiddle" height="16" width="16" border="0" src="/olcweb/styles/shared/linkicons/image.gif"> (0.0K)</a>, for example).

One can hear the difference between short vowel and long vowel sounds by pronouncing the following pairs of words:

Sometimes, long vowels are represented by a single letter in words like acorn, over, and union.

Most often, however, they are represented with letter combinations such as