Spelling Problems – Common Mistakes

Capital Letters

Use Capital (T, S, B, etc.) letters for the following types of words:

• Days, Months and Public HolidaysMonday, January, Christmas
• Proper names of People and PlacesJack, Maria, New York, Germany
• Titles for PeopleMs, Dr, General
• Nationalities and Regions (both nouns and adjectives)Dutch, Swedish, Basque
• Titles of Works of Art (content words only)The Last Day of Summmer, American Journal of Medicine

When to Double Final Consonants

The final consonant of a word is often doubled when adding -ed, -ing, -er, -est in the following cases:

• Double final “b, d, g, l, m, n, p, r and t” at the end of words:rob – robbing
  sad – sadder
  big – bigger
  travel – traveller
  skim – skimming
  win – winner
  pop – popping
  prefer – preferred
  hit – hitting
• Double these final letters there is the following pattern “consonant – vowel – consonant” at the end of a word. For example: travel – ‘vel’ v – consonant – e – vowel l – consonant.
• Words of more than one syllable have their consonants doubled onlywhen the final syllable is stressed.begin – beginn ing BUT open – opening
  defer – deferr ing BUT offer – offering
• When words have more than one syllable and end in ‘l’ British English alwaysdoubles the ‘l’, even in the case of unstressed syllables. American English, on the other hand, the ‘l’ is not doubled when the syllable is unstressed.British English – travelled
  American English – traveled

From: http://esl.about.com/od/writingstyle/a/g_spellrules.htm