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“Focussed” or “focused”? The double consonant

The rule that I learned was that when you have a short vowel in the last syllable, you double the last consonant before adding the ending. Thus "cut" becomes "cutting", or "beget" becomes "begetting".

According to this rule, "focus" should become "focussing". But the spell checker in my browser wants me to change that to "focusing". This bothers me because I would think that would be pronounced something more like fo-kyoo-sing.

I looked this up, and apparently the Brits follow the rule, but Americans don't. Any idea why? And what is the rule, then?

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KSwenson
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1 Answers1

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The American rule is that the final consonant is doubled only if the verb is stressed on that syllable and it is a short vowel.

tchrist
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    So why isn't it "bussing" instead of "busing" when referring to school transportation? And I've always spelled focussing with a double S. Even Americans vary. – John Lawler Dec 29 '12 at 21:54
  • @JohnLawler As far as I can tell, busing in an irregular. I spell it focussing, too, but it is because I am old; I predate mechanical spellcheckers, which enforce a ridiculous ideal of US-vs-UK-ness everywhere. Bothers me. Makes people think there is only One True Way to spell a word. – tchrist Dec 29 '12 at 22:37
  • Ugh. Spellcheckers. – John Lawler Dec 29 '12 at 22:54
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    Interesting, and I don't doubt you; but is there some authority for this? – Tim Lymington Dec 29 '12 at 23:23
  • @TimLymington If you are addressing me, the current “American rule” of only doubling the final consonant in applicable inflections of verbs stressed on their last syllable is easy to come by. However, it is rather new, and not followed by all. You can do ngrams on the shifting frequencies in the two corpora by time; it is uneven. I myself still always spell things like cancelled, programmed, signalled, transferred, levelled that way, because they look “righter” to me. It might be related to length, silly though that sounds, insofar as dialled, fuelled can sometimes give me momentary pause. – tchrist Dec 30 '12 at 01:39
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    "The American rule" where do we find that? – Kris Dec 30 '12 at 08:15
  • @Kris You *are* kidding me, right? Where do you “find” it? You *find* it every single possible place you can even begin to start to pretend to look, like here, here, here, and here. So tell me, where was it that *you* looked yet somehow managed to miss this obvious thing? I’ll put it on my blacklist. – tchrist Dec 30 '12 at 12:52
  • @TimLymington I am not sure that “authority” ever quite applies in a situation like this, but Oxford is in my list of refs I gave immediately above. – tchrist Dec 30 '12 at 13:45
  • (replicating comment posted as edit to answer by "anonymous user") Both the British and the American spelling rule is the same for doubling consonants before a suffix with a vowel. If the last consonant has a short stressed vowel then the consonant doubles (swim, swimming, fit, fitting). If the word has more than one syllable and the stress doesn't fall on the last syllable, then the consonant doesn't double. The exception to this is that words ending in 'l' or 'p' in British English do double even in a multisyllable vowel, but they don't in American English... – FumbleFingers Nov 02 '13 at 16:30
  • Focus is pronounced more ['fou-cas] rather than [foc-'yus] with the 'o' being long and the u is what's called a 'turned v' which is an unstressed sound. The stress is on the first syllable not the last therefore the 's' doesn't double. focus - focusing - focused. – FumbleFingers Nov 02 '13 at 16:30
  • This rule has exceptions even in America, such as eavesdropped, kidnapped, formatted, programmed. Alex B lists some of them in his answer to the linked question. – herisson Jul 28 '16 at 22:50