5. Adding Endings
There are two kinds of suffixes, those that begin with a vowel and those that begin with a consonant. As usual, the spelling problems occur with the vowels:
|
Vowel Suffixes |
Consonant Suffixes |
||
| - - - age | - - -ist | - - - ness | - - - cess |
| - - - ant | - - - ish | - - -less | - - -ment |
| - - -ance | - - -ing | - - -ly | - - -ty |
| - - - al | - - -ar | - - -ful | - - -ry |
| - - -ism | - - -o | - - -hood | - - -ward |
| - - -able | - - -on | - - -wise | |
| - - -an | - - -ous | ||
| - - - a | - - -or | ||
| - - -es | - - -ual | ||
| - - -ed | - - -unt | ||
| - - -er | - - -um | ||
| - - -est | - - -us | ||
| - - -y | - - -ive | ||
1. Words that end in the letter y must have the y changed to i before adding any suffix:
| body - bodily | marry - marriage |
| many - manifold | family - familiar |
| happy - happiness | puppy - puppies |
| beauty - beautiful | vary - various |
| company - companion | fury - furious |
| plenty - plentiful | merry - merriment |
2. In words that end in a silent e you must drop it before you add a vowel suffix. The silent e is no longer needed to make the preceding vowel long as the incoming vowel will do the trick:
| ride - riding | cure - curable | use - usual | age - aging |
| fame - famous | force - forcing | refuse - refusal | slice - slicing |
| pure - purity | ice - icicle | nose - nosy | convince - convincing |
| globe - global | race - racist | pole - polar | offense - offensive |
3. Words that end in an accented short or modified vowel sound must have the final consonant doubled to protect that sound when you add a vowel suffix:
| Quebec - Quebecker | remit - remittance | confer - conferring | refer - referred |
| upset - upsetting | shellac - shellacking | occur - occurred | concur- concurrent |
Note that this doubling is not done if the accent is not on the last syllable. If the word ends in a schwa, there is no need to "protect" it.
| open - opening | organ - organize |
| focus - focused | refer - referee |
4. Normally you drop a silent e before adding a vowel suffix. However, if the word ends in -ce or -ge and the incoming vowel is an a, o, or u, you cannot cavalierly toss out that silent e. It is not useless: it is keeping its left-hand letter soft, and your a, o, or u will not do that. Thus:
| manage - manageable | peace - peaceable |
| courage - courageous | revenge - vengeance |
| surge - surgeon | change - changeable |
| notice - noticeable | outrage - outrageous |
Gorgeous George bludgeoned a pigeon noticeably! Tsk.
5. Adding consonant suffixes is easy. You just add them. (Of course you must change a final y to i before you add any suffix.)
| peace - peaceful | harm - harmless | age - ageless |
| pity - pitiful | child - childhood | rifle - riflery |
5.2. /sh/
When this sound occurs before a vowel suffix, it is spelled ti, si, or ci.
| partial | cautious | patient | vacation |
| special | deficient | suspicion | suction |
| inertia | delicious | ratio | pension |
| musician | physician | optician | quotient |
| electrician | nutrition | statistician | expulsion |
5.3. /ee/ before a vowel suffix
When /ee/ precedes a vowel suffix, it is usually spelled with the letter i:
| Indian | obvious | medium |
| ingredient | zodiac | material |