The -ing ending

One sound, and the root usually unchanged — but with three spelling changes to recognise: drop the e, double the consonant, or neither.

Word endings

-ing SUFFIX_ING_01

Strong rule · High reliability · Very common · Early · Reading and spelling

• /ɪŋ/ ing: jumping, running, hoping

Where Wiggler teaches it: Skill 13: Suffixes

Child explanation

Ing always says /ɪŋ/. Sometimes the word before it changes a little: hope loses its e, and run gets an extra n.

The rule

The -ing ending is always /ɪŋ/. What changes is the root: a silent e is dropped (hope, hoping), a final consonant after a short vowel is doubled (run, running), and otherwise nothing changes (jump, jumping).

What is really going on

The doubling and e-dropping are spelling conventions that preserve the vowel information the base word carried. Doubling keeps the vowel short — hopping from hop — and dropping the e keeps it long, since the i of -ing does the same job the e was doing. For a reader, the practical consequence is that a doubled consonant signals a short vowel and a single one signals a long vowel: hopping and hoping.

Position in the word

• End of a word — The suffix position. For example: jumping, running, hoping.

Examples

Easy examples

jumping, running, hoping, playing, reading

More examples

singing, helping, looking, walking, sitting, swimming, getting, making, taking, writing, smiling

Pseudo-words

Made-up words that follow the rule. A child who reads these has the pattern rather than the vocabulary.

blimping, shugging, froping

Contrast pairs

• hopping versus hoping — The doubled consonant is what tells a reader the vowel is short.
• planning versus planing
• taping versus tapping

Teacher note

Teach the hopping/hoping contrast explicitly — it is the clearest demonstration that a doubled consonant carries information rather than being decorative, and it pays off again in every later suffix. For reading, that inference is the whole value of the doubling rule.

Learn these first

• NG — ng — One sound made at the back of the mouth. It never starts an English word, and the g is not a separate /g/.
• Magic e — v_e — A vowel, one consonant, then e. The e says nothing and the vowel says its name. Reliable — as long as the child knows what it does not cover.

Related rules

• The -ed ending — -ed — /t/ in jumped, /d/ in played, /ɪd/ in wanted. Only the third adds a syllable, and only after t or d.
• The -er and -est endings — -er / -est — Both are unstressed, so -er is /ər/ rather than the /ɜːr/ of her. The same ending also makes agent nouns: teacher, farmer, baker.
• Magic e — v_e — A vowel, one consonant, then e. The e says nothing and the vowel says its name. Reliable — as long as the child knows what it does not cover.
• Closed syllable — CVC — A syllable ending in a consonant. The vowel is short — the most reliable vowel generalisation in English.

• Previous in Word endings: The -ed ending — -ed — /t/ in jumped, /d/ in played, /ɪd/ in wanted. Only the third adds a syllable, and only after t or d.
• Next in Word endings: The -er and -est endings — -er / -est — Both are unstressed, so -er is /ər/ rather than the /ɜːr/ of her. The same ending also makes agent nouns: teacher, farmer, baker.
• All reading rules

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