orthography - Why do we write "fixing" instead of "fixxing"?


When we have one vowel and one consonant and we want to add 'ing', we usually double the last consonant. Why don't we add an extra 'x' to the word 'fix'? We don't double 'w' and 'y' maybe because they are semi-vowels but what about 'x'?



Answer



The letter x is never doubled as in tax: taxing, taxed. Probably because x is not found double in other terms.



Words of one syllable ending in one vowel + one consonant, double the last letter before a vowel suffix.


We don't double up the final consonant when it's w, x or y.



(howtospell.co.uk)


From Dictionary Of The British English Spelling System | Greg Brooks



4.1.2 Some consonant letters are never or almost never written double: h, j, q, v, w, x, y.


Almost all the exceptions occur in compound words, for example bathhouse, beachhead, fishhook, hitchhiker, witchhunt and withhold, where the first is always part of a digraph or trigraph ending the first element of the compound word; also bowwow, glowworm, powwow, skew(-)whiff (usually spelt with the hyphen, however) and slowworm. There are also a few slang words with : bevvy, bovver, chivvy (also spelt chivy), civvy, divvy, flivver, luvv-y/ie, navvy, revving, savvy, skivvy, spivv(er)y. Some brandnames deliberately flout this rule, e.g. Exxon.



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