Transfering Or Transferring? What Is The Correct Spelling?

Spelling / By

A common error made when spelling in the English language is between transfering and transferring, but which one is the correct answer?

Transferring is the correct spelling, and also the only one. Transfering is always incorrect and should never be used. Transfering, or transfered, are not real words. If you put transfering into a Google document, or another document with a spell checker, the autocorrect will kick in and change the word to ‘transferring’ instead.

The rest of this article will cover why transfering is incorrect, and why transferring is correct.

Why Transfering Is Incorrect

Transfered and transfering are two common spelling errors. Both of these words need to double up the ‘r’. The correct spellings are transferred and transferring. Doubling the ‘r’ is a less known rule in the English language, which is why it’s such a common error.

However, there’s another reason why people get these two confused. There’s a major difference between American English and British English. For example, the word canceled. In British English, it’s spelled as ‘cancelled’ whereas in American English, it’s ‘canceled’. Read more about “canceling here”

Thanks to these rules, whether or not you should double a letter is confusing. As for doubling the ‘r’, it’s the same in both British and American English. In both iterations of the language, the ‘r’ in transferring is doubled.

Although there are exceptions to each rule, transferring is not an exception. You should always spell it with the double r. These are more examples of incorrect spellings you shouldn’t use: transfeering, tranferring, tranfering, and transfring.

Why Transferring Is Correct

Think of a word that ends with ‘r’. For example, let’s look at occur. When you add ‘ing’ to it, the correct spelling becomes occurring. The same applies to other words, such as ‘deter’. Deter becomes deterring.

As mentioned earlier, there are exceptions to this rule, but for transferring, you don’t have to worry about that. In short, transferring is spelled with two r’s because of the double consonant rule. It applies to other letters other than r as well.

This rule is defined by the ending of the word you’re looking at. If the word is one syllable and has 1 vowel followed by 1 consonant, you add a second consonant when adding ‘ed’ or ‘ing’ to the word. Examples: sit (sitting), prefer (preferred), and run (running).

Note that words ending with w, x, or y are an exception to this rule. Typically, those three don’t receive double letters.

 

Conor
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