Word-Ending Drill (ing tion ers ies)
ing tion ers ies ted ment ness able
Every passage contains: ing tion ers ies ted ment ness able
QWERTY layout assumed. Backspace corrects; uncorrected errors count against net WPM.
Every word in this drill's practice text is built from a recognisable stem plus one of eight endings — "-ing", "-tion", "-ers", "-ies", "-ted", "-ment", "-ness", or "-able" — as in "working", "station", "readers", "copies", "wanted", "payment", "kindness", and "readable". Unlike the Common Trigram Drill, which repeats bare three-letter fragments like "ing" and "ion" on their own, every ending here shows up attached to a real word, so the finger sequence being practised is the actual join between a stem and its ending, not the fragment in isolation.
By the time a fluent typist's hands reach the last few letters of a word, their eyes have usually already moved on to reading what comes next. A slip near the front of a word tends to get caught almost immediately, because the eyes are still sitting right on top of it. A slip in the ending is more likely to go unnoticed a moment longer, simply because attention has already shifted forward — part of why a fumbled suffix is more likely to survive into finished text uncorrected than a fumbled opening.
Why This Drill
One ending in this set does something the other seven don't: "-ies" doesn't just attach to its stem, it replaces a letter first. "copy" loses its Y before "-ies" is added, and the same thing happens to "body" and "study" — "copies", "bodies", "studies". The hand can't simply keep typing the stem and tack an ending on afterward the way it can for "work" plus "-ing"; the last letter of the stem has to change before the ending even starts.
"-ted" is the odd one out for a different reason: it isn't really a fourth kind of ending at all. "wanted", "started", and "counted" all happen to end in T already, so the ordinary "-ed" past-tense ending just lands right after it — the trigram is real, but it's a coincidence of the stem's last letter meeting the suffix's first, not a suffix of its own the way "-ment" or "-ness" is.
Practising full words rather than bare fragments also means practising the moment a stem's rhythm has to change gear into its ending's different letter pattern — the point where "work" stops and "-ing" begins is a real transition the hands have to execute cleanly, not two separate three-letter chunks glued together on the page, which is a step further than the Speed Building: Common Letter Triples lesson takes the same three letters. Words in the Long Word Drill often chain more than one of these endings onto a single stem, which is part of what makes them long in the first place.
The One Ending That Rewrites the Stem
"copies", "bodies", and "studies" all drop the Y that "copy", "body", and "study" end in before adding "-ies" — English does this whenever a word ends in a consonant plus Y, so the plural is never "copys". That means the hand has to anticipate the swap one letter early rather than typing the familiar stem in full and simply appending an ending afterward, which is a genuinely different motion from every other ending in this drill.
Endings That Look Alike but Aren't Built the Same Way
"readable" and "workable" are exactly what they look like: "read" and "work" with "-able" attached. "capable" only looks like it follows the same pattern — it's a single word borrowed whole into English that happens to end the same way, with no free-standing "cap-" stem behind it. The two can be typed identically fast, but only one of them is actually a stem-plus-suffix construction; the spelling can match without the word-building history matching.
Why a Fumble Here Is Slower to Notice
Eyes generally run a little ahead of the hands in fluent typing, which is fine right up until an error happens at the exact point attention has already left. A mistyped opening sits under eyes that haven't moved on yet; a mistyped ending often doesn't get that same immediate scrutiny, since the visual focus has already shifted to whatever comes next in the sentence.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is this different from the Common Trigram Drill, since both cover "-ing" and similar endings?
That drill repeats bare fragments like "ing" on their own, disconnected from any word. This one only ever presents an ending attached to a real stem, so what you're practising is the transition into the ending, not the three letters by themselves.
Why do "copies", "bodies", and "studies" look so different from just adding an S to "copy", "body", and "study"?
Because English drops the Y before "-es" after a consonant. The spelling changes exactly at the seam, which is the part your hands have to relearn.
Is "-ted" its own suffix the way "-ment" or "-ness" is?
Not really — "wanted", "started", and "counted" just happen to end in T before the ordinary "-ed" past tense is added, so the letters T-E-D appear together without "-ted" being a genuine ending on its own.
Is "capable" built the same way as "readable" and "workable"?
It looks that way, but no — "readable" and "workable" are literally "read" and "work" plus "-able", while "capable" is a single word borrowed whole into English that only happens to end the same way.
Why does an ending typed wrong sometimes make it into finished text more often than a wrong opening?
By the time the hands reach a word's ending, the eyes have typically already moved on to what comes next, so there's less immediate visual feedback sitting on the mistake compared with an error right where attention still is.
Should I practice these words slower than my normal typing speed?
Slow enough to actually notice the stem-to-ending transition in each word is more useful than rushing through at full speed, since the point is building a clean, deliberate join rather than just repeating the words quickly.