Adding -s, -ing and -ed
English · Key Stage 1 · The School
Endings change the job, not the word
One cat, two cats. I jump, I am jumping, I jumped. The root word stays visible and a small ending does the work of saying how many, or when. Seeing the root inside the longer word — jump inside jumping — is what makes spelling these reliable rather than guesswork.
When -s becomes -es
Most plurals just take -s. But after a hissing ending — s, ss, sh, ch, x, z — you cannot say the word without an extra beat, so it takes -es: boxes, wishes, buses, churches. Say it out loud; if your mouth needs an extra syllable, the spelling needs the e.
Short vowel, one consonant: double it
Hop becomes hopping, not hoping. The doubled p keeps the o short. Without it you get hoping, a different word with a long o. So when a short word ends in one vowel then one consonant, double that consonant before -ing or -ed — hop also becomes hopped, not hoped, for exactly the same reason. Jump does not double, because it ends in two consonants already, so it is jumped, not jumpped.
A silent e steps aside
Hope ends in a silent e that is only there to keep the o long. Add -ing and the i does that job instead, so the e is dropped: hoping. The same happens with -ed: hope becomes hoped, not hopeed. Same for baking and smiling, and their -ed forms baked and smiled. The e leaves because something else has taken over its work — which is also why hop, with no e, has to double instead.