RULES WHEN TO ADD 2 CONSONANTS BEFORE TO ING ORD ED VERBS

RULES WHEN TO ADD 2 CONSONANTS BEFORE TO ING ORD ED VERBS

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 and consonant:

vowels are a  e  i  o  u;
consonants are all other letters (b  c  d  f  g . . .)

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 sit	stopping, 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 preFER	beginning preferring, preferred
If the final syllable is not stressed, we do not double the final letter.	LISten HAPpen	listening, listened happening, happen
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