Adding Suffixes: To Double or Not to Double Consonants
The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation
Adding Suffixes: To Double or Not to Double Consonants
Do you ever wonder if you should double a letter when adding a suffix? For example, why does shop become shopping, not shoping since hope becomes hoping, not hopping?
This week’s tip will help you spell correctly when adding suffixes. We have Lawrence K. to thank for sending this suggestion as well as for many of the examples.
Tip: When adding a suffix, double the final consonant if the preceding vowel would otherwise change from short to long.
Example: shop / shopping
Explanation: Without the additional “p,” the pronunciation would rhyme with hoping.
Example: bat / batted
Explanation: Without the additional “t,” the pronunciation would rhyme with gated.
Of course, what kind of English rule would we have without exceptions? (A consistent one?)
According to the tip, transit and profit should both have their consonants doubled when adding a suffix. Otherwise, the “i” becomes long. However, this is not the case.
Examples:
transit / transited / transiting
profit / profited / profiting
In an effort to make us feel even less secure with our spelling, some words are spelled correctly by either doubling the consonant or not.
Example: travel / traveling OR travelling (British preference)
The moral of the story is that we often have no choice but to look these words up or rely on spell checkers that don’t always catch these exceptions.
Pop Quiz
1. I am writing / writting my memoirs.
2. I need a new fited / fitted sheet for my bed.
3. She felt traped / trapped in her job.
4. The boat was propeled / propelled by jet fuel.
5. This document needs formating / formatting.
6. The announcer recaped / recapped the plays.
7. Her remains were intered / interred in the nearby cemetery.
8. His book still hasn’t been edited / editted.
9. She hoped that meditating would help her become enlightened / enlightenned.
10. Labeling / labelling your files thoughtfully will help you find them again later.
Pop Quiz Answers
1. I am writing my memoirs.
2. I need a new fitted sheet for my bed.
3. She felt trapped in her job.
4. The boat was propelled by jet fuel.
5. This document needs formatting.
6. The announcer recapped the plays.
7. Her remains were interred at the nearby cemetery.
8. His book still hasn’t been edited.
9. She hoped that meditating would help her become enlightened.
10. Labeling or Labelling your files thoughtfully will help you find them again later.
If the article or the existing discussions do not address a thought or question you have on the subject, please use the "Comment" box at the bottom of this page.
One more tip that will help out with most of the “exceptions” of the sort you mentioned.
When the word has two syllables, like “cancel” and “profit,” only apply the first rule to double the ending consonant after a short vowel sound if the second syllable is the accented syllable. Otherwise, don’t double it. (The accent on the final syllable stresses the short sound, which we preserve by doubling the ending consonant.)
Thus, canceled and canceling, profited and profiting.
But with a word like “rebel” becomes rebelling, rebelled, rebellion.
And “permit” becomes permitted and permitting.
It works for 3 syllables too: inhabit, inhabiting, inhabited, but uncommitted.
This rule comes out of Spalding’s “Writing Road to Reading” and has helped me out numerous times since I ran across it a few years ago.
Thanks for sharing a good tip.
Why do words ending in “x” not follow this rule?
Can you think of a word ending in x where the vowel would change from short to long in a similar way to hop/hoped/hoping instead of hop/hopped/hopping?
I think “fix” is such a word. I think the ‘i’ would become long in fixed and fixing, but these are the correct spellings.
The vowel in fix/fixed/fixing does not change in the same way as hop/hopped/hopping.
Fix is an exception to the rule, like “transit” and “profit.” Maybe because an “x” takes a “ks” sound and sounds like a double consonant.
Words with final consonants w, x, and y do not follow the rule.
For school we need to find this out
Why does editing not have double ‘t’ so please answer this it would be awesome so please answer this by 2 days because we need to find our before two days
In most words with two or three syllables with the first syllable staying accented, such as editing and canceling, the final consonant is not doubled. Some spellings, such as traveling/travelling, depend on whether it is used in American or British English.
We would also like to stress the importance of proper capitalization and punctuation in order to avoid run-on sentences in your writing.
Does the rule about “or else it might become a long vowel” also explain fórmat/fórmatted?
What about the word quiz? Should we consider “qu” to be a single sound (like ch/tr) – a “kw” to fit the CVC pattern? (and then the rule above)
Yes, the rule could apply to the word formatted. Since the word quiz contains the digraph qu, the same rule could apply.
How about travel? Travelled or travel? The stressed syllable is as in profit.
Most Americans tend to write “traveled,” while it’s “travelled” in British English.
The TIP was about avoiding changing short to long, but maybe you should also avoid long to short: e.g., debut -> debuted vs. debutted.
Are there any exceptions to these two rules?
In English grammar, exceptions to the rules are common.
Why do we double consonant in “big – bigger”
And not in ” new- newer”
Acording to the rule, both have one sylible and end with vowel + consonant.
English is full of exceptions to the rules. We might often be better off calling them guidelines than rules. Words with final consonants w, x, and y do not follow the “rule” (as per our response to John of March 6, 2015, and the Merriam Webster’ Learner’s Dictionary).
This is because the ew in new is a vowel digraph, two letters creating one sound. This is the same reason we don’t double playing or sawing or lower.