Just in time for today’s Grammar Day, Donald Trump fired off the following tweet:
How low has President Obama gone to tapp [sic] my phone during the very sacred election process.
In order to help President Trump out a wee bit, I’ve decided to post the relevant extract from my recently published Grammar and Punctuation for Key Stages 3 & 4 with Handy Usage Notes. The extract deals with the doubling of consonants at the end of verbs (such as ‘tap’). But the President also used the wrong tense and, if his pronouncement was meant to be a question, failed to deploy the question mark, of which more further on.
6.10 Spelling verb inflections
6.10.1 The doubling of consonants
Before endings -ing and -ed are added to base forms ending with a single consonant letter (except x), those bases double the consonant letter if the preceding vowel is stressed and spelt with a single letter. This is exemplified below.
- Bar ends with a single r preceded by a stressed a spelt with a single letter. Thus, bar – barring – barred. Similarly, permit ends with a single t preceded by a stressed iI spelt with a single letter. Thus, permit – permitting – permitted.
By contrast, when the vowel is either unstressed or written with two letters, there is no doubling of the final consonant.
- Enter also ends with a single r preceded by e spelt with a single letter, but this vowel e is unstressed. This is why the doubling of the final r does not occur: enter – entering – entered. Similarly, although moan ends with a single n preceded by a stressed sound oa, this sound is represented not by one but by two letters: oa (sequences of two vowel letters representing a single sound, such as oa, ai or ea, are called diphthongs). Again then, the doubling of the final n does not occur: moan – moaning – moaned.
Exceptions to the consonant-doubling rule
The rule is broken with bases ending in g and c: those consonants are doubled despite being preceded by single unstressed vowels: zigzag – zigzagging – zigzagged; traffic – trafficking – trafficked.
Unlike American English, British English also breaks the rule in bases ending in l, m and, in a few verbs, p coming after single unstressed vowels: signal – signalling – signalled; trial – trialling – trialled; travel – travelling – travelled; telegram – telegramming – telegrammed; worship – worshipping – worshipped. However, most verbs ending in –p have regular spellings: develop – developing – developed; gossip – gossiping – gossiped.
END OF EXTRACT FROM MY TEXTBOOK
As for the wrong tense, the Present Perfect (here, has gone) may not be used to refer to events which took place at a defined time in the past (such as last year’s American presidential election), this being the job of the past tense – the Simple Past, in this case. And while the structure of this part of the presidential tweet is typical of a question, no question mark is used. It is possible, however, that this pronouncement was meant to be exclamatory, but the writer’s command of English tripped him up. If a question was indeed intended, what President Trump should have written is this (stylistic and content-related considerations aside):
(groan) That man butchers the English language at every time he tries to form a sentence.
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Great to hear from you, Diana; I hope you are well and enjoying your paradise. Do you think he’ll say that the rule for the doubling of consonants is ‘fake news’? 🙂
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He would not win a spelling bee. I defer to your expertise but will add from my American grammar that I remember to double the final consonant before adding -ed or -ing when the vowel has a short vowel sound…like tap. But I would not double the final consonant for the word without those endings. If the vowel is a long vowel sound like tape, I would drop the ‘e’, not double the consonant and then add -ed or -ing, taping. If I see a word with double consonants like tapping, I know to pronounce it with the short a vowel sound ( and the original word was tap.)
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Yep, you are correct, Deborah: it is tapping and tapped; that’s exactly what the extract from my grammar says – but, of course, not ‘to tapp’. I keep enjoying your posts!
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Thank you, Anna. ❤
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Thinking of you again, Anna. Hope all is well there with you.
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Very many thanks, Deborah; I’m well and hope that you are too.
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Glad to hear it. I am doing well, just drowsy with our time change. 🙂
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Sorry to hear this, Deborah. Our time change is coming soon, so I will be joining you! 🙂
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Something to look forward to. 😉
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LOL! 🙂
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I though the language they spoke across the “pond” was American, and not English. Are you an authority on American as well, Anna? 😉
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No, not really, Ankur, but I do seem to know a bit more about it than President Trump …
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