By teacher Jeneen
English spelling can be quite difficult! Some people are lucky to speak or learn a language in which words are spelled how they are said. However, this is not the case with English. Much of our spelling requires memorisation due to things like silent letters, double letters, and unexpected letters. Let’s look at one common spelling challenge.
When should I double the last letter of a word before adding -ING or -ED?
Fortunately, we have a RULE for this. The key is to look at the last 3 letters of the word. If you have consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC), then you need to double the last letter before adding these suffixes.
The basics:
sit = CVC = sitting
plan = CVC = planned
begin = CVC = beginning
prefer = CVC = preferred
The exceptions to CVC:
make, like (silent “e”) = making, liked
grow, play, fix (w/y/x aren’t doubled) = growing, played, fixing
water, listen (no stress on the last syllable) = watered, listening
travel (its own exception) = traveling OR travelling
No CVC, no double letter:
eat = VVC = eating
help = VCC = helped
But just when you think the rules will save you, English has double letters in many other places for seemingly no reason. Take the word “letters”, for example, with its two Ts. According to Wikipedia, this goes back to Old English, where two consonants made a longer sound. While this sound feature was lost from English long ago, the double letters in writing remained.
For the most part, we have to memorize how words are spelled, but we do have a few rules like CVC to help us along the way. So remember, CVC at the end usually means that you will need to double the last letter!