sullivan@harvard.ARPA (John Sullivan) (08/10/84)
The rule I learned, which seems to apply almost all the time, is that the final consonant in a verb is doubled when forming the past tense only if that final syllable is accented. Thus "canceled" has just one 'l' (although I must admit it looks strange to me, and recently when I used it I had to look it up to assure myself it wasn't an exception), while a word like "rebelled" gets a second 'l'. I don't know of any exceptions to the rule off hand. John M. Sullivan sullivan@harvard.{uucp,arpa}