# developped / developed ?



## Bene2010

Hello, 

I cannot find if "develop", at the past form, has double P or not. 
It is : developped or developed ? 
Thanks


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## Natalisha

It's "developed".

Welcome to the forums, Bene!


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## Bene2010

thanks! 
(But it's strange, developped is also used a lot on the web)


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## sound shift

It's "developed". I've never seen "developped" anywhere other than the web.


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## Gernot Back

Why don't you make a fight?

developed vs. developped
developing vs. developping


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## Bene2010

That's why the web is not so good for not english sepaker ! 
Thanks


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## Gwan

Love the Google fight thing!
Presumably people get confused because a double consonant usually produces a short vowel sound, like 'loped' vs. 'lopped' or 'hoped' vs 'hopped', whereas with 'developed' the vowel sound is short despite having only one p. (NB: I don't pronounce the vowels identically in 'developed' and 'lopped', but I still imagine this is why people frequently make this mistake.)


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## grubble

Note that, although the US and UK spellings of words are sometimes different, "developed" is correct in all versions of English


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## Bene2010

It can be a reason. 
That's right that in italian, the vowel before a double consonant is shorter than before only one.


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## Loob

The reason we don't double the "p" is that the stress is on the "e", not the "o":

_St*o*p - sto*pp*ed

Dev*e*lop - develo*p*ed._


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## entangledbank

In English it has more to do with stress. The -p is doubled in some words in BrE: _worshipped_ and _kidnapped_ (and _catnapped_), because the final syllable has a secondary stress*. (In AmE these all have single -p-.) But the final syllable is unstressed in _developed, galloped_, and others, so it's never doubled (in proper printed books, that is).

* Hm, not sure about _worship_. It might be better to say it's just a historical accident: it _used to_ have a secondary stress there, at least.


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## Bene2010

The reason we don't double the "p" is that the stress is on the "e", not the "o":

_St*o*p - sto*pp*ed

Dev*e*lop - develo*p*ed.

_Thanks, I understand !


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## grubble

Bene2010 said:


> I cannot find if "develop", at the past form, has double P or not.
> It is : developped or developed ?
> Thanks


It is always "developed"

If you do a Google search for "conjugate english" you will find websites such as these http://www.google.co.uk/search?rlz=...5&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=2ee2b439b550ea98

*Important*: You must decide whether you want UK or American spelling and choose accordingly. It doesn't matter which you choose as long as you try to be consistent.


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## Gwan

Loob said:


> The reason we don't double the "p" is that the stress is on the "e", not the "o":
> 
> _St*o*p - sto*pp*ed
> 
> Dev*e*lop - develo*p*ed._



Good point. But, while I'm obviously just speculating, I still think the double consonant thing might still be the reason why people make this mistake fairly often.


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## CapnPrep

Bene2010 said:


> That's why the web is not so good for not english sepaker !


The Web is actually great for non-English-speakers, but as Gernot Back showed, you cannot find the answer by doing a single Google search. You have compare (at least) two different results and then decide.

But for spelling questions, the old-fashioned approach is still the best approach: look in the dictionary.  And nowadays, many dictionaries are available free on-line, and for most purposes they are much easier to use than paper dictionaries. Try this one, for example, and click on "Word forms". Another reason why the Web is so good.



entangledbank said:


> * Hm, not sure about _worship_. It might be better to say it's just a historical accident: it _used to_ have a secondary stress there, at least.


How do you know that?


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## Bene2010

But for spelling questions, the old-fashioned approach is still the best approach: look in the dictionary.  And nowadays, many dictionaries are available free on-line, and for most purposes they are much easier to use than paper dictionaries. Try this one, for example, and click on "Word forms". Another reason why the Web is so good.

Of course ! I haven't thought to look at the verb declination. 
Thanks for all


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## Gernot Back

Bene2010 said:


> Of course ! I haven't thought to look at the verb declination.


You mean conjugation.


			
				[URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflexion]en.wikipedia.org[/URL] said:
			
		

> Conjugation is the inflection of verbs; declension is the inflection of nouns, adjectives and pronouns.


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## Millidesign

the confusion comes from the french,
Development is written "Developpement" with 2 p in french.


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## Einstein

Millidesign said:


> the confusion comes from the french,
> Development is written "Developpement" with 2 p in french.


Exactly, this is the first reason that came to mind.
In general, as others have said, we double the consonant when the verb is a monosyllable (getting) or has the stress on the last syllable (forgetting), but not when the stress comes earlier (targeting, targeted).
There are exceptions in BE, where the "l" is always doubled (levelled, modelling). This is done also with "worship" (worshipping, worshipper). This could be another reason for thinking there are two p's in "development".


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## Olestra

Millidesign said:


> the confusion comes from the french,
> Development is written "Developpement" with 2 p in french.



Thanks for this! (I hope it is okay to resurrect threads. If not, I apologise and please do correct me!) I am an anglophone Canadian living in Vanier, Ontario. I double the "p" in "developing" all the time.

I grew up in Ottawa in the Public Ottawa Catholic Separate School Board French Immersion System which was not very good (or rather incompletely funded and designed), and my French is disgracefully poor and barely usable even in emergencies; but I am sometimes surprised by how I notice a fair number of my spellings and pronunciations as clearly influenced by Franco-Ontarian and Quebecois French. I even wonder if it's the origin of how some people outside Canada seemed to often misunderstand what "Canadian raising" sounds like when it happens when they literally seemed to think some Canadians pronounced "about" as "uh-boot"--as if it was a joke or poorly inspired conjecture that went viral.


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## PaulQ

The OED informs that the word *developing *is relatively recent (1785) and has not been recorded with two '*p*'s.


Olestra said:


> they literally seemed to think some Canadians pronounced "about" as "uh-boot"


... but Canadians do...


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## Linterbug

There are most definitely rules.  Unfortunately most people aren't taught them, and coupled with various other influences, the lines have become blurred.  One massive area of impact on our spelling and grammar has been internet usage, and Microsoft's 'Word'.  This influence cannot be understated.  Also many people do not know how to change their settings from US to British English - and even when you do, I have found Spellcheck to be a liability rather than a help, often continuing to bombard us with American spellings!  I tell my students to check online dictionaries if they're unsure how to spell a word, rather than rely on Spellcheck.  The rule here is that certain words have their consonants doubled in the British spelling when turned into gerunds. Examples: focussed (American: focused), worshipped (American: worshiped), targetted (American: targeted).  The American spellings changed (can't remember the date) but was during a period when someone thought it was a good idea to 'simplify' spelling.  Bill Bryson gives all the details in one of his books.


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## JulianStuart

Linterbug said:


> There are most definitely rules.  Unfortunately most people aren't taught them, and coupled with various other influences, the lines have become blurred.  One massive area of impact on our spelling and grammar has been internet usage, and Microsoft's 'Word'.  This influence cannot be understated.  Also many people do not know how to change their settings from US to British English - and even when you do, I have found Spellcheck to be a liability rather than a help, often continuing to bombard us with American spellings!  I tell my students to check online dictionaries if they're unsure how to spell a word, rather than rely on Spellcheck.  *The rule here is that certain words have their consonants doubled *in the British spelling when turned into gerunds. Examples: focussed (American: focused), worshipped (American: worshiped), targetted (American: targeted).  The American spellings changed (can't remember the date) but was during a period when someone thought it was a good idea to 'simplify' spelling.  Bill Bryson gives all the details in one of his books.


Welcome!  In this forum you will find lots of discussions about how and why AE and BE differ 

The bolded text in your post highlights the problem - some do and some don't.  You can either make lists or spend some time explaining the stress rules and long and short vowels etc.  Even then, it helps to know the pronunciation to see which rule to follow and if you are a learner, you may not have ever heard it. 

I would say the problem is with English (spelling) _in general_, and you highlight the fact that the problems differ somewhat in different versions of English.    English in England has changed quite a bit since people started emigrating to N America and the English there has also changed but, well, independently


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## Andygc

"Targeted" isn't a gerund, and that has been the standard spelling of the past participle in BE for more than 50 years (source: citations from BE publications in the OED).

Edit
Also, from the OED entry for "focus"





> Forms: Pples. focused, focusing; in the U.K. commonly, but irregularly, written focussed,


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## Einstein

As a Brit I would never write "targetted/targetting", "focussed/focussing" or "benefitted/benefitting", because these verbs are stressed earlier.
Andygc, I don't get your point about "targeted"; of course it's not a gerund, but where the last letter is doubled it happens before all suffixes:
-ing, -ed, -er and -est.


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## Andygc

My point is that neither targeted nor focused are spelt targetted or focussed in BE. Focussed is simply wrong, and targetted is obsolete.


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## natkretep

I don't think _focussed _or _focussing_ is wrong. I do see it, and I have used it myself.

See: focusing or focussing?


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## Einstein

natkretep said:


> I don't think _focussed _or _focussing_ is wrong. I do see it, and I have used it myself.
> 
> See: focusing or focussing?


Well, that discussion doesn't seem to be conclusive one way or the other. The problem here is that there are not many verbs ending with a single "s", so the rule is not so well-established as with other consonants.

I was intrigued in another thread to see the opposite "mistake": "busing" with a single "s". The plural of "bus" is of course "buses", not "busses" (I don't know of any noun that doubles the last letter when forming the plural), but with the _verb _being a monosyllable, I'm sure "bussing" is right (otherwise it would tend to rhyme with "using").


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## Andygc

natkretep said:


> I don't think _focussed _or _focussing_ is wrong. I do see it, and I have used it myself.
> 
> See: focusing or focussing?


I have always used "focused". Perhaps I should have said "irregular" not "wrong" (as did my quotation of the OED). My first response here was to Linterbug, who wrote of her students, referred to gerunds when giving examples of past participles, and who appears to prefer to teach her students irregular and obsolete spellings. She also criticizes the BE dictionary that comes with Word - which does not continue


Linterbug said:


> to bombard us with American spellings!


but gives us correct BE spellings.


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## Afef Chaibi

We don't double the "p" because the letter "l" is not included in the last syllable. So we don't have a short vowel between 2 consonants in the same syllable.


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## Andygc

Afef Chaibi said:


> We don't double the "p" because *the letter "l" is not included in the last syllable*. So we don't have a short vowel between 2 consonants in the same syllable.



It is in my English. As already explained, the explanation lies in the stress pattern.


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## natkretep

Yes, that last syllable of the stem (_ie_ the word without any inflections) needs to have a secondary stress before you double the consonant letter. In my accent, that last syllable has a neutral vowel /ə/ rather than the full vowel /ɒ/.

This makes it different from, say, _kidnap _where I will double that last consonant letter (_kidnapper, kidnapping_). Although the stress is on the first syllable, the second syllable has a secondary stress, and is pronounced with a full vowel /a/ rather than /ə/.


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## RM1(SS)

Einstein said:


> I was intrigued in another thread to see the opposite "mistake": "busing" with a single "s". The plural of "bus" is of course "buses", not "busses" (I don't know of any noun that doubles the last letter when forming the plural), but with the _verb _being a monosyllable, I'm sure "bussing" is right (otherwise it would tend to rhyme with "using").


busing -- participle of _to bus_
bussing -- participle of _to buss_

(Yes, I'm aware that the post I'm responding to is just shy of three years old.)


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## Gernot Back

Einstein said:


> I don't know of any noun that doubles the last letter when forming the plural


What about quizzes?


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## natkretep

RM1(SS) said:


> busing -- participle of _to bus_
> bussing -- participle of _to buss_
> 
> (Yes, I'm aware that the post I'm responding to is just shy of three years old.)


I'm pretty sure _bussing_ (_sending by bus_) is the normal BrE spelling. Collins Cobuild agrees:


> Word forms: plural *buses*, 3rd person singular present tense *busses * , present participle *bussing * , past tense, past participle *bussed *
> LANGUAGE NOTE:  The plural form of the noun is *buses*. The third person singular of the verb is *busses*. American English uses the spellings *buses*, *busing*, *bused *for the verb.


https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/bus


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## Andygc

natkretep said:


> I'm pretty sure _bussing_ (_sending by bus_) is the normal BrE spelling


I agree. The form "busing" seems bizarre to me, and I wouldn't know how to pronounce it if I hadn't been told it's the participle of "to bus" in AE.
(busy, business?) I note that Random House accepts both spellings for AE.


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## kentix

There is no good way to spell it. Busing seems wrong but so does bussing. And since bussing means kissing, I think that busing distinguishes the two.


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## Andygc

I doubt there's much risk of confusion. "The city has a policy of kissing children to school" - seems an unlikely misunderstanding.  I can't remember anybody outside of 16th century poets using "buss", and how can you tell the difference when spoken?


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## kentix

It's not completely unused in the 21st century.

2017 - Then she leaned in and bussed him on the cheek for good measure. " The world needs more men like you, " she added

2008 - Dismissed, Dozier stepped over, bussed Emily on the cheek, and paused to lean down and touch foreheads with...

2007 - men who drank Manhattans and bussed pliant blonde waitresses on the sly.

1997 - because he took me home, bussed me on the cheek, and never called again.


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## Andygc

Andygc said:


> I can't remember anybody outside of 16th century poets using "buss"


One thing I like about this forum is that statements like that are taken as a challenge, thus saving me the effort of searching for examples of recent usage. Especially when those examples clearly demonstrate how there is no chance at all of choosing the wrong meaning.

men who drank Manhattans and *transported *pliant blonde waitresses *on buses* on the sly 
men who drank Manhattans and *kissed *pliant blonde waitresses on the sly 

But I really, genuinely don't mind that in AE the form "busing" is used.


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## kentix

When I see the letter combination "buss" anywhere, my _first_ thought is strictly and solely kissing. Obviously, if that doesn't work in context I can go to plan B (on the fly, subconsciously), and consider alternate meanings, just as for any other word in a specific context. 

So buss, bussed, bussing, busses are all forms of the word "buss" for me, not the word bus. They don't trigger the mental image of a bus.

Bus, buses, busing, bused do trigger that mental image, because they are clearly based on the word bus.


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## RM1(SS)

Blunderbuss = A kiss given to the wrong person?


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## natkretep

It does seem strange to me to make an exception with _bus_ when the general rule is that if you have a word of one syllable with the short vowel and a single final consonant letter at the end, you double that when you add _-ing_ (hence _cutting, supping_). We would all write _pussing wound_ would be not, rather than _pusing wound_? (Or will you say _pussing wound _makes you think of cats?)


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## kentix

Like I said, I think neither looks "right". Bussing seems like too many esses and busing doesn't seem like enough. Maybe we need a special letter for that context like that German letter.

For what it's worth, I think we do generally write the plural of plus as pluses.

And surpluses and gases. Although gassing and gassed.

To me buses looks more normal than busing and especially bused. But as I said, bussing and bussed is not an improvement. It looks like the root word buss, meaning kissing. There's no good answer for me.


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