Adding -ed and -ing: The Rules Children Get Wrong
Published 10 September 2026
Almost every -ed and -ing error comes from one of three changes: dropping a silent e, changing y to i, or doubling a final consonant. Taught separately they feel like three unrelated facts. Taught together, as a single decision a child makes before writing the ending, they become one habit — and one of the fastest visible improvements in a child’s writing.
The decision is: look at the last letter of the base word, then choose.
If it ends in silent e, drop the e
hope → hoping, hoped · make → making · use → using, used · dance → dancing, danced
The silent e has done its job — it signalled the long vowel — and the vowel in -ing or -ed takes over that role. Keeping both would give hopeing, which is one of the most common errors in primary writing.
One vowel ending is enough: drop the silent e before any ending that starts with a vowel. Before an ending that starts with a consonant, the e stays — hopeful, useless, lovely.
What to do: teach the pair hoping and hopping at the same time. The contrast makes both rules clearer than either does alone, and it links directly to the doubling rule.
If it ends in a consonant plus y, change y to i — for -ed only
cry → cried · carry → carried · study → studied · try → tried
But not for -ing: crying, carrying, studying, trying. English avoids putting i next to i, so the y survives before -ing.
And not when a vowel comes before the y: play → played, enjoy → enjoyed, stay → stayed. The y is part of the vowel sound there, so it stays put.
Change y to i only when a consonant comes before it, and only before -ed. Those two conditions remove nearly all the confusion.
What to do: put cried and crying side by side. Children who see the pair rarely make the criing error afterwards.
If it ends in one vowel and one consonant, double it
hop → hopping · stop → stopped · run → running · plan → planned
This is the doubling rule, and it is the one children most often over-apply once they learn it. The conditions matter: one syllable, one vowel, one final consonant — and for longer words, stress on the last syllable (begin → beginning, but visit → visiting).
What to do: teach this one last of the three. It has the most conditions and benefits from the other two being automatic first. The full doubling guide covers the longer words and the British -l exception.
Everything else takes the ending unchanged
Most verbs need no change at all: jump → jumping, jumped · walk → walking, walked · look → looking, looked · shout → shouting, shouted.
This is worth saying explicitly, because a child who has just learned three rules often starts modifying words that need nothing done to them. Jumpped and lookked are rule-learning errors, not carelessness.
The default is “add the ending and change nothing” — the three rules are exceptions to that default, not replacements for it.
What to do: in any practice set, make at least half the words ones that need no change. Otherwise your child learns that every word needs modifying.
Teaching all three as one decision
The efficient version is a single four-step check the child runs before writing any ending:
- Does it end in silent e? Drop the e.
- Does it end in consonant + y, and am I adding -ed? Change y to i.
- Is it one syllable, one vowel, one final consonant? Double it.
- None of those? Add the ending unchanged.
Practise it as a sorting task before a writing task — give twelve base words and have your child say which of the four applies before writing anything. Separating the decision from the handwriting makes the rule visible and takes the load off.
Expect a few weeks. Expect over-application in the middle of it. And expect the improvement to show up in free writing last, since rules are the first thing to drop when a child is also managing ideas and handwriting. These three sit alongside plurals and silent letters in the small set of rules worth teaching at all.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is it “hoping” but “hopping”?
Hope ends in a silent e, which is dropped before -ing, leaving one p and a long vowel. Hop has a short vowel and one final consonant, so the p doubles to keep it short. The doubled consonant is what protects the short vowel sound — without it, hoping and hopping would look identical.
Why is it “cried” but “crying”?
Because English avoids ii. The y changes to i before -ed, giving cried, but changing it before -ing would produce criing, so the y stays. The same applies to studied/studying and carried/carrying.
Do these rules work for words ending in a vowel plus y?
No — words like play, enjoy and stay keep the y: played, enjoyed, stayed. The y is part of the vowel sound rather than a consonant-following y, so the change does not apply. This is the condition children most often miss.
What about verbs that do not follow any pattern?
Irregular past tenses — go/went, bring/brought, catch/caught — do not take -ed at all, so no spelling rule applies. They must be learned as vocabulary. The -ing form of these verbs is regular, though: going, bringing, catching.
In what order should I teach the three rules?
Drop the e first, since it is the simplest and fixes the very common hopeing error. Then y to i. Then doubling, which has the most conditions and is the easiest to over-apply. Allow a couple of weeks per rule rather than teaching all three in one sitting.
My child applies the rules in exercises but not in stories. Why?
Because free writing loads everything at once — ideas, sentence structure, handwriting and spelling all compete, and the newest skill drops first. It is very common and it resolves as the rule becomes automatic. Practising in exercises is still doing its job; it just takes longer to reach spontaneous writing.
SpellEasy plays each word and checks your child’s attempt immediately, which is what turns a rule they know into a rule they use. Download free on the App Store.