How should you spell tablet(t)ing?

For years the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s science division has arranged an annual residential course to which it gives the title “Tabletting technology for the pharmaceutical industry”. But when The Journal gives publicity to the course it always changes the spelling of the first word to “tableting”.

Which is right? Is the PJ interpret(t)ing the spelling incorrectly? Will it get a carpet(t)ing from the Society for its variant spelling? Will the Society be target(t)ing it for some heavy picket(t)ing?

This disquiet(t)ing discrepancy would cease if the course were to be scrapped. But attendance, if not rocket(t)ing, has certainly not been plummet(t)ing.

Provided the Society has no problems with its budget(t)ing, ticket(t)ing and market(t)ing, and continues billet(t)ing participants in comfort, with lots of cosset(t)ing, then it should find itself pocket(t)ing some income from the course each year.

In its choice of spelling, the Society has followed common practice within the pharmaceutical industry. But what the industry has failed to recognise is that when adding “ing” or “ed” to a verb that ends in “et” the normal convention is to double the “t” only when the verb has its main accent on the “et” syllable, as in abet/abetting, beget/begetting, beset/ besetting, duet/duetting, regret/regretting — not forgetting forget/forgetting.

This helps to stop such words looking as if they should be pronounced to rhyme with “eating”.

When the accent is on an earlier syllable there is no need to employ the extra “t” — thus we have banquet/banqueting, blanket/blanketing, bracket/bracketing, brevet/breveting, bucket/bucketing, buffet/ buffeting — and that’s just some of the words beginning with “b”.

OK, so English is a living language, and no spellings should be set in tablets of stone. But our language already has too many irregularities. Without a good reason, such as reducing the risk of confusion, we should try to resist introducing even more inconsistencies.

By the way, this year’s tablet(t)ing course is in Cambridge from 23 to 25 November 2009. So book now if you happen to be covet(t)ing a place.