Graphotactics and spelling: Evidence from consonant doubling

• We investigated adults’ spelling of medial consonants in nonwords.
• Choosing between single-letter and double-letter spellings can be difficult.
• Choices are influenced by the spelling chosen for the following syllable.
• Number of letters used to spell the preceding vowel is also influential.
• Graphotactics has an influence on spelling above and beyond phonology.

Choosing between alternative spellings for sounds can be difficult for even experienced spellers. We examined the factors that influence adults’ choices in one such case: single- versus double-letter spellings of medial consonants in English. The major systematic influence on the choice between medial singletons and doublets has been thought to be phonological context: whether the preceding vowel is phonologically long or short. With phonological context equated, we found influences of graphotactic context—both the number of letters in the spelling of the vowel and the spelling sequence following the medial consonant—in adults’ spelling of nonwords and in the English vocabulary itself. Existing models of the spelling process do not include a mechanism by which the letters that are selected for one phoneme can influence the choice of spellings for another phoneme and thus require modification in order to explain the present results.