en-gramma: why bigger, not biger or hotter, not hoter. Is there any rule for it?

Answer 1

The final consonant of a word is often doubled when adding -ed, -ing, -er, -est in the following cases:

Double final "b, d, g, l, m, n, p, r and t" at the end of words:
rob - robbing
sad - sadder
big - bigger
travel - traveller
skim - skimming
win - winner
pop - popping
prefer - preferred
hit - hitting

Double these final letters there is the following pattern "consonant - vowel - consonant" at the end of a word. For example: travel - 'vel' v - consonant - e - vowel l - consonant.
Words of more than one syllable have their consonants doubled only when the final syllable is stressed.
begin - beginn ing BUT open - opening
defer - deferr ing BUT offer - offering

When words have more than one syllable and end in 'l' British English always doubles the 'l', even in the case of unstressed syllables. American English, on the other hand, the 'l' is not doubled when the syllable is unstressed.
British English - travelled
American English - traveled

Answer 2

a single consonant would force the first vowel sound to become "long" so hoter would be pronounce h O ter, not with the soft o sound associated with hot, but with the o sound found in low.

same thing with bigger-- biger, the i would be pronounced b-eye-ger

Answer 3

Jason is correct.

There are some exceptions. For example, buses or busses? Sometimes words change because people misspell words and eventually the misspelling winds up in the dictionary as a real word because of frequent usage.

P.S. Either is correct. Buses or busses.

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Answer 4

I don't know the exact wording of the rule, but with words like that generally if there is a vowel then a consonant then an 'e' the vowel is long, but if there is a vowel then two like consonants then an 'e' the vowel is short....