What Is a Suffix?
A suffix is a word part that is placed at the end of a base word. Common suffixes include ED, ING, and EST. Take a look at more suffix examples below.
A suffix often transforms a word into a new part of speech. In the examples above,
The Four Most Common Suffixes
The most common suffixes are S, ES, ED, and ING. These four suffixes are the most useful for beginning readers and spellers to learn because they appear frequently in words, and their meanings are easy to understand and remember.
Suffix S and ES indicate plurals.
Suffix ED indicates past tense.
Most often, suffix ING is added to verbs to indicate that something is happening in the present.
Adding Suffixes Is Different from Adding Prefixes
When adding a prefix to a word, you simply add the prefix to the beginning of the base word (as in unhappy). The spelling of the base word never changes. Super easy, right?
But adding a suffix to a word isn’t quite as straightforward. That’s because when you add a suffix, the base word often changes. For example:
Thankfully, there are some solid guidelines to follow when adding suffixes to words. Before we dive into those rules, though, let’s take a quick look at the two types of suffixes.
Two Types of Suffixes
You may have noticed on the free download that the suffixes are divided into two categories.
It’s important for kids to recognize whether a suffix is a consonant suffix or a vowel suffix since the rules for adding them to base words are different.
Rules for Adding Suffixes
Rule 1: Add a consonant suffix directly to the base word.
Rule 2: Check the base word before adding a vowel suffix.
Here are the first three guidelines we teach for adding vowel suffixes.
- If the base word ends in two consonants, just add the vowel suffix.
- If the base word has 1 syllable, 1 short vowel, and 1 final consonant, double the final consonant before adding the vowel suffix. (We teach this as the “1-1-1 Rule.” Although it may sound complicated, this rule is actually quite easy to follow when you have an understanding of syllable division rules.)
- If the base word ends in a Silent
E , drop the E before adding the vowel suffix. (Again, this is an easy rule to understand: you don’t want to have two E’s in a row, so you have to drop the first E.)
Rule 3: If the base word ends in a single Y, change the Y to an I before adding the suffix.
(This rule applies to both consonant suffixes and vowel suffixes.)
