RULE IV.—NO DOUBLING.
A final consonant, when it is not preceded by a single vowel, or when the accent is not on the last syllable, should remain single before an additional syllable: as, toil, toiling; oil, oily; visit, visited; differ, differing; peril, perilous; viol, violist; real, realize, realist; dial, dialing, dialist; equal, equalize, equality; vitriol, vitriolic, vitriolate.
EXCEPTIONS.—1. The final l of words ending in el, must be doubled before an other vowel, lest the power of the e be mistaken, and a syllable be lost: as, travel, traveller; duel, duellist; revel, revelling; gravel, gravelly; marvel, marvellous. Yet the word parallel, having three Ells already, conforms to the rule in forming its derivatives; as, paralleling, paralleled, and unparalleled. 2. Contrary to the preceding rule, the preterits, participles, and derivative nouns, of the few verbs ending in al, il, or ol, unaccented,—namely, equal, rival, vial, marshal, victual, cavil, pencil, carol, gambol, and pistol,—are usually allowed to double the l, though some dissent from the practice: as, equalled, equalling; rivalled, rivalling; cavilled, cavilling, caviller; carolled, carolling, caroller. 3. When ly follows l, we have two Ells of course, but in fact no doubling: as, real, really; oral, orally; cruel, cruelly; civil, civilly; cool, coolly; wool, woolly. 4. Compounds, though they often remove the principal accent from the point of duplication, always retain the double letter: as, wit'snapper, kid'napper,[114] grass'hopper, duck'-legged, spur'galled, hot'spurred, broad'-brimmed, hare'-lipped, half-witted. So, compromitted and manumitted; but benefited is different.
RULE V.—FINAL CK.
Monosyllables and English verbs end not with c, but take ck for double c; as, rack, wreck, rock, attack: but, in general, words derived from the learned languages need not the k, and common use discards it; as, Italic, maniac, music, public.
EXCEPTIONS.—The words arc, part of a circle; orc, the name of a fish; lac, a gum or resin; and sac, or soc, a privilege, in old English law, are ended with c only. Zinc is, perhaps, better spelled zink; marc, mark; disc, disk; and talc, talck.
RULE VI.—RETAINING.
Words ending with any double letter, preserve it double before any additional termination, not beginning with the same letter;[115] as in the following derivatives: wooer, seeing, blissful, oddly, gruffly, equally, shelly, hilly, stiffness, illness, stillness, shrillness, fellness, smallness, drollness, freeness, grassless, passless, carelessness, recklessness, embarrassment, enfeoffment, agreement, agreeable.
EXCEPTIONS.—1. Certain irregular derivatives in d or t, from verbs ending in ee, ll, or ss, (as fled from flee, sold from sell, told from tell, dwelt from dwell, spelt from spell, spilt from spill, shalt from shall, wilt from will, blest from bless, past from pass,) are exceptions to the foregoing rule. 2. If the word pontiff is properly spelled with two Effs, its eight derivatives are also exceptions to this rule; for they are severally spelled with one; as, pontific, pontifical, pontificate, &c. 3. The words skillful, skillfully, willful, willfully, chillness, tallness, dullness, and fullness, have generally been allowed to drop the second l, though all of them might well be made to conform to the general rule, agreeably to the orthography of Webster.