55 CHECKING YOUR SPELLING / brush – brushes buzz – buzzes church – churches duchess – duchesses fox – foxes Changing the form of a verb When a verb ends in ‘y’ and it is necessary to change the tense by adding other letters, the ‘y’ is changed into an ‘i’ and ‘es’ or ‘ed’ is added. He will marry her tomorrow. He was married yesterday. A dog likes to bury his bone. A dog always buries his bone. There is often a silent ‘e’ at the end of the word if the vowel is ‘long’: Using ‘long’ vowels and ‘short’ vowels bite, date, dupe, hope, late. Each of these words consists of one syllable (one unit of sound). If another syllable is added, the ‘e’ is removed: bite – biting date – dating hope – hoping