Saturday, April 1, 2023

Spelling rules

http://speakspeak.com/resources/english-grammar-rules/english-spelling-rules/double-consonant-ed-ing

Spelling: when to double a consonant before adding -ed or -ing to a verb

We add -ing to a verb to form its present participle, and -ed to regular verbs to form the past simple. When doing this, we sometimes double the last letter of the verb, as in these examples:

  • stop ⇒ stopped, stopping
    stoped
    stoping
  • refer ⇒ referred, referring
    refered
    refering
Sometimes, however, we don’t double the last letter, as with the verb visit:
  • visit ⇒ visited, visiting
    visitted
    visitting
To understand this spelling rule, it’s first necessary to know the meaning of vowel andconsonant:
vowels = a  e  i  o  u
consonants are all other letters (b  c  d  f  g, etc).
Here’s the rule:
When to double a consonant before adding -ed and -ing to a verb
We double the final letter when a one-syllable verb ends in consonant + vowel + consonant.*stop, rob, sitstopping, stopped, robbing, robbed, sitting
We double the final letter when a word has more than one syllable, and when the final syllable is stressed in speech.beGIN, preFERbeginning, preferring, preferred
If the final syllable is not stressed, we donot double the final letter.LISten, HAPpenlistening, listened, happening, happened


In British English, travel and cancel are exceptions to this rule: 

travel, travelling, travelled; cancel, cancelling, cancelled. 

* We do not double the final letter when a word ends in two consonants (-rt-rn, etc.): 
start – starting, started; burn - burn, burned. 

* We do not double the final letter when two vowels come directly before it:
remain – remaining, remained. 

* We do not double w or y at the end of words:
play – playing, played; snow - snowing, snowed.

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