ING-lish: Rules 2 and 3 for Adding -ing to Verbs in English

As we have seen in the first article (ING-lish: Spelling the -ing Form of Verbs Correctly, Rule 1), forming continuous verbs is, unfortunately, not a simple matter of attaching -ing to the basic verb. These rules will help you to pick up on the "awkward" verbs and learn to spell these forms correctly.

Verbs ending in -ie

With these verbs, drop the -ie, replace it with -y and add -ing.

Examples

• die: He is thought to be dying of a broken heart.
• lie: She was lying about her unfinished homework.
• tie: You're tying up that parcel too tightly.

This rule may seem confusing to learners as it is almost the opposite of the rule for forming the plurals of nouns ending in -y: for example, the singular cherry which has the plural cherries.

[If the -ie ending did not change, we would have words with three vowels together: dieing, lieing, etc. While English has a few words with three vowels in a row - for example, courageous - this pattern looks clumsy and is generally to be avoided.]

Verbs ending in -c

These verbs add the letter k before the -ing ending.

Examples

picnic: There are many people picnicking in the park.

traffic: A special unit was set up to combat the trafficking of drugs.

panic: Calm down! Panicking won't help.

The reason for this rule is to do with pronunciation. The letter c has two sounds: soft /s/ and hard /k/, the pronunciation depending on which letter follows the c. (See separate article ESL Tip: The Sounds of The C for further details and examples.) The letter c at the end of a word always has the hard /k/ sound, whereas c+i has the soft /s/ sound. To keep the /k/ sound intact, a "k" must be added before the -ing ending.

Forming the Present Participle of English Verbs: Spelling Changes and Pronunciation