Philip Hart wrote: > OT, why are there two "r"s in "occurrence" and one in "appearance"? The way I learned the consonant doubling rule was that if a word has one or two syllables and the final syllable has a short, simple vowel, then you double the consonant when adding suffixes that start with another short vowel like -ed, -ing, and -ence. Thus occur gets its r doubled, but appear doesn't. I forget whether there is also a limit on which consonants qualify. Certainly I can think of examples for d, n, r, and t. Paging Dr. Whom. Paging Dr. Whom. Casey