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Forms such as concussed or discusses may lead people to wrongly double the final consonant of focus ―at least that's the only reason I have come up with.

Yet, I cannot come up with a potential explanation of why people wrongly write biassed or the plural biasses, but not aliasses

GJC
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    Personally, I distinguish *buses* (public transport vehicles) from *busses* (electrical current switching gear). Why that way round and not the other? Do many others make the same (or opposite?) distinction? – FumbleFingers Jul 05 '20 at 11:04
  • @FumbleFingers Is transfered a misspelling even for the pronunciation with main stress on the first syllable? If so, why is it an exception? – GJC Jul 05 '20 at 11:08
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    British usage favors more such consonantal doublings than American does. The usual American practice is to double the final consonant before common terminal inflections or suffixes only if the root word is accented on the final syllable. This does not apply to bias, but some spellers may be motivated to double anyhow for fear lest with only the single s that s may lose voice (|s| → |z|) and/or the preceding vowel may become long (avoiding spellings like buses for fear of their being pronounced as in he abuses). – Brian Donovan Jul 05 '20 at 11:25
  • @BrianDonovan Native speakers do not know about |s| → |z|. What about monosyllabicity, and what visually "seems" a monosyllable (CVVC: spain vs bias) – GJC Jul 05 '20 at 11:39
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    The verb forms *transfer, prefer,...* end in a stressed syllable, which "explains" why that final r is normally doubled in the orthography. But at the end of the day it really is just orthography, which is only loosely related to true (spoken) language. – FumbleFingers Jul 05 '20 at 11:47
  • |s| → |z| is of course gaining voice--my bad there. – Brian Donovan Jul 05 '20 at 11:55
  • @FumbleFingers https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/transfer#Etymology for both the verb and the noun; Longman Pronunciation Dictionary for the noun only gives /'trænsfɜr/. Garner's fourth edition: "BrE doubles the final consonant after a fully pronounced vowel in words such as kidnapped, -ing and worshipped, -ing. (One exception is galloped, galloping.)" – GJC Jul 05 '20 at 12:01
  • Does this answer your question? "Focussed" or "focused"? Rules for doubling the last consonant when adding -ed – chasly - supports Monica Jul 05 '20 at 16:21
  • @chaslyfromUK Unfortunately it doesn't; the only related statement is "Focussed" probably came about because "focused" can be analysed as "fo-cused" or "foc-used", which doesn't make any sense at all: there's no English fo(c)- or cuse(d) either – GJC Jul 05 '20 at 16:45

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