Inspect the Join

Can three letters break a perfectly good word? Start with hope and add ing. Hopeing looks plausible... but it is wrong. The trick is not just spotting the suffix. You must inspect the join before the letters lock together.

An affix is a group of letters added to a base word. A prefix goes before: un joins kind to make unkind. A suffix goes after: ness joins kind to make kindness. The base stays steady in both examples. But some suffixes make the spelling at the joining edge change. Watch hope plus ing. Hope ends with a silent e. The suffix ing begins with the vowel i. So drop the final e first. Hope becomes hop. Now add ing to make hoping. Do not bolt the suffix onto every letter and write hopeing. That tempting version keeps an e the correct word must lose. Use this three-part check. First, find the base word. Next, read the one prefix or suffix you have been given. Then inspect the join. Ask what must happen there: keep the spelling, drop final e, change y to i, or double the final consonant. Make only the needed change.

Let's work through an example. An 11+ spelling question says: Add the suffix "-ing" to the word "hope". Write the correctly spelt new word. Here is what you know. The base word is hope. The required suffix is ing. Your task is to form one word using exactly that one suffix. Inspect the join. The final e in hope is silent, and ing starts with i, a vowel. Remove that e... and hold the remaining letters steady: h-o-p. Now bring in the given suffix, i-n-g. The two fixed groups join without shifting: h-o-p-i-n-g. Read the finished word: hoping. Now check the demands. Did you add one suffix? Yes: ing. Did you make the required spelling change? Yes: the silent e was dropped. Is the result correctly spelt? Yes. Write the explicit answer in lower case: hoping.

Base word. Given affix. Inspect the join. Make only the needed change, then read your new word with confidence!