Example of such words are:     As far as I know, at least in American English, words that have single syllable double their ending consonant letters when modified.  Such as:  hop - hopping cut - cutting map - mapped   Another part of my question is, are there any exemptions to this rule? Does this rule also apply in British English? If yes, what are the exemptions? If not, what rules apply in regard to this specific matter?  If there are no such rules, perhaps the only way to go is by memorization. Could anyone cite me a real good exhaustive list of such words?
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Initially, my question was: is "focussed" or "focused" the correct past tense of "focus", but since this applies to a lot of words, I would like to generalize and ask: is there supposed to be a rule when to double the consonant?
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It's Friday again, how about some fun to get us into the weekend?  What is the longest word you can come up with for which all the letters in that word are in alphabetical order?   Rules:   English words only    Can't be a name of a place, person or other proper noun.   if it contains the same letter twice in a row, that does not disqualify it.   No fair looking it up on Google!   Update: One more rule to help you guys out.   The word can be in either ascending or descending alphabetical order.
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Has English adopted any common morphemes from any "exotic"-type languages?  By that, I'm trying to exclude our most frequent borrowings; i.e. French, Latin, and Greek, from which nearly all our suffixes and prefixes are borrowed &mdash; endings like -ance, -ette,  -ience, -ium, -ology, and innumerable more.  (Prefixes would be for example, anti-, circ-, princ-)  However, once you escape those big 3, I find it gets a lot harder; I personally can't think of any off the top of my head.  Can anyone else?
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For example, therapist may be split into the + rapist, neither of which (arguably) has anything to do with the original words.  Another example would be conflagration: con + flag + ration. Or weather: we + at + her.  Note that words like threesome and purebred would not qualify, because the parts are intentional and contribute to the original word's meaning.  It seems to me there might be a word for this, which I would describe as "accidental lexical componentry" — but I'm not sure there is one. And if I do think of one I will be sure to add a supplemental (supple + mental) section (sect + ion) to this question (quest + ion).
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My son is learning how to spell. He is doing a good job listening to sounds and working out spelling that way (which doesn't work for many words, but at least a lot of common ones), but although he's gotten the -ing chunk, he frequently misses doubling letters in these words.  Is there a guideline for when the end consonant is doubled? He's working on these sorts of words:        riding   sitting   skating   writing   getting
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Can you resolve a dispute between myself and my girlfriend? She recently won a game with what I think is a double movement (although there's no mention of this in the rule book).  She put one two letters down to make one word, which also scored linked to another letter. But she then added another letter immediately to the left of the finished word, which then extended the second word. I just don't think you can make a second movement like this in scrabble!    My sister placed down W, D and E, the ones that I circled in red. Is she allowed to do that? I told her it was impossible is it?  Can you resolve this for me please?
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I want to know whether there is a hyphen in the word re-offend, or if it is spelt reoffend. I looked in Oxford English dictionary and the word "reoffend" appears, but then I checked Merriam-Webster and the word is not in there.  So is reoffend a word or is it re-offend?  I'm in Australia where we observe UK English if that matters.
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Usually, when we see two letters put together it is to define the pronunciation or to differentiate synonyms or just its foreign origins. But some words don't seem to have any reason to double up.     Why does vacuum have two of the letter U?  Why does aardvark have two of the letter A?  Why does llama have two of the letter L?
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I have realized that to pronounce the plural form of words ending in -th, we have to drop the letter "h". e.g. Months is pronounced /mʌnts/. But I have never seen this point mentioned in any context. I just want to make sure that this rule is correct and can be always applied.
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I've seen a contraction of two words.  I can't see why it wouldn't've been possible to have been contracted twice.  Is it possible and how should it be punctuated?  Update:  Ok, to sum up the answers so far   This appears in spoken British and American English It is from one of the lower  Even if spoken this way sometimes, it isn't really written as a double contraction, except as written speech in fiction. And from my own googling in , it appears most written forms are old British words, often nautical like fo'c'sle.
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While reading about diphthongs in a different question today, I noticed that while the word "diphthong" doesn't seem to contain any actual diphthongs, it does contain 3 sets of consonant groupings.  When I was younger, I used to think consonant groupings actually were called diphthongs. I know now that I was mistaken, but I do wonder - is there a single word that describes consonant groupings?  After doing some searching on Google, Wikipedia and this site, I'm unable to find a definitive answer besides "consonant cluster" or "consecutive consonant". Those terms may be the only accurate ones available, but I would be mildly disappointed.
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I'm wondering why I need to say scissors instead of just 'scissor'. Are there any rules about it?  I would think that I only have one scissor, meaning it would be singular and not plural. (That's at least how it is in my native language.)  This would only be one scissor in Danish.    Can anyone tell me why it needs to be plural?
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Examples:   Anyone Anything Anytime Anywhere Everyone Everything  Every time Everywhere No one Nothing No time Nowhere Someone Something Sometime Somewhere   Why is there a discrepancy? Is there any rule for determining when to use a single word vs. two words?
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Is there a name for dialect/variant of English that is commonly used in titles? The one that intentionally omits auxiliary verbs, articles and other words for shortness:   Normal English: The new album is now available, and it contains exclusive booklet inside. “Title” English: New album available, exclusive booklet inside
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When quoting on a website like Stack Exchange, we have block quotes:  like these  but if they aren't available, and I want to use &quot;double quotation marks&quot;: &quot;then the quote is enclosed in them like this&quot;. Now it is ok for a single paragraph, I can put &quot;...&quot; at the beginning and the end of the paragraph. For example, from : &quot;The next period in the history of English was Early Modern English (1500–1700). Early Modern English was characterised by the Great Vowel Shift (1350–1700), inflectional simplification, and linguistic standardisation.&quot; That's OK. But what if I quote multiple paragraphs? Should I use &quot;...&quot; at the beginning and end of each paragraph separately? Example: &quot;The next period in the history of English was Early Modern English (1500–1700). Early Modern English was characterised by the Great Vowel Shift (1350–1700), inflectional simplification, and linguistic standardisation.&quot; &quot;The Great Vowel Shift affected the stressed long vowels of Middle English. It was a chain shift, meaning that each shift triggered a subsequent shift in the vowel system. Mid and open vowels were raised, and close vowels were broken into diphthongs.&quot; &quot;English began to rise in prestige, relative to Norman French, during the reign of Henry V. Around 1430, the Court of Chancery in Westminster began using English in its official documents, and a new standard form of Middle English, known as Chancery Standard, developed from the dialects of London and the East Midlands&quot; Is that the correct way? Or is there any other way to do so?
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We say (a pair of) trousers, (a pair of) scissors. For these two particular words, is/was there something like "a trouser" or "a scissor"? Did it use to mean anything?   E.g. in Czech, the word for scissors is also plural but is derived from "knives". So I was wondering if the pair-words like these are derived from some (now forgotten) words with a meaning in singular. Similarly, the Slovak word for trousers is a plural of a Czech word meaning "a single trouser leg". (Czech and Slovak are very close.)
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I'm quite unsure regarding the usage of single quotation marks (') and double quotation marks (") in English.  I had thought that double quotation marks were usually used to quote sentences from passages/given sources, nouns/things ("Westminster Bridge", "alliteration", or "voice" regarding its usage in poetry), as well as some less common/important uses including being snarky and using them to indicate a sarcastic remark.   Someone had told me today that you were supposed to refer to things with two inverted commas (") instead of one.  Which one is correct? Could someone explain the usages between the two different types of quotation marks?