Select the most appropriate option that can rectify the incorrectly spelt word in the following sentence. I doubt that these lifts can acommodate 100 people.

Correct — A. The sentence prints acommodate, and the correction has to double the letters in both places.

Rule: accommodate takes two c's and two m's — a-c-c-o-m-m-o-d-a-t-e.

Only option (a) spells it that way. The single t at the end is also part of the correct form, which rules out the last option even though it doubles the c and the m.

Why the others are wrong

• (b)
  acomodate — Acomodate doubles neither letter, so it repeats the error in the sentence and adds a second one.
• (c)
  accomodate — Accomodate doubles the c but leaves a single m. It is a very common misspelling and the strongest decoy here.
• (d)
  accommodatte — Accommodatte gets both doubles right and then doubles the t, which the word never takes.

Spelling items of this kind turn on which consonant doubles, and accommodate is the standard test case because both of its consonant pairs double.

A usable memory hook is that the word is roomy enough to accommodate two c's and two m's. The same doubling carries into its noun, accommodation.

When an option list contains one form with both doubles and one with a stray extra letter, check the tail of the word as carefully as the middle — that is where option (d) fails.

Key facts

• Accommodate is spelt with two c's and two m's.
• The noun accommodation keeps both doubled pairs.
• The final consonant t is single in every form of the word.

Common traps

• Settling for accomodate, which corrects the c and forgets the m
• Checking the middle of a long word and skimming its ending
• Assuming the longest option is the safest

No directly related past PYQ was found.