Regular Verbs: Spelling Rules

Here are the rules for creating past and past participle forms of regular verbs:

Regular verbs ending in a silent e take -d in the simple past and past participle:
close=closed

Regular verbs ending in a vowel + y take -ed in the simple past and past participle:
play=played

Regular verbs ending in a consonant + y take -ied in the simple past and past participle (the y becomes an i followed by -ed)
marry=married

All other regular verbs take -ed in the simple past and past participle.
visit=visited

Follow these rules when there is a consonant after a vowel (stop, ban, open, offer…)

If there is a consonant after a stressed vowel at the end of the word, double the consonant
stop – stopped
ban – banned
swap – swapped

If the vowel is not stressed, we do not double it:
open – opened
offer – offered

In British English we double the last l even though the last vowel is not stressed. Here are some examples:

travel – travelled
cancel – cancelled
level – levelled
marvel – marvelled