The arrivals board at the station flickers, and a new line appears at the top: “14:32 — Express from the capital — COMING.” A traveler waiting on the platform reads the board, opens a message to a friend, and types, “The train is comming.” The phone underlines it. The traveler deletes an M, sends the message, and boards the train — never learning why the word has one M and not two, or why the doubling rule that works for running and stopping does not work here. The arrivals board knows. The board always knows.
The correct spelling is coming. The misspelling comming — with a double M — is one of the most common errors in English, and it happens because the doubling rule is misapplied. Come ends in a silent E, and when the E drops, the M stays single. The double M belongs to a different family of words.
The Arrivals Board
Start with the station, because the station is where the word earns its keep. Coming is the present participle of come — the form used for movement toward the speaker, for arrival, for approach. “The train is coming.” “She is coming home.” “Winter is coming.” In each case, the word names motion toward a destination, and the destination is where the speaker is — or where the speaker’s attention is.
The word also carries a set of fixed phrases that run the language. Coming soon — the trailer, the announcement, the promise. Coming back — the return. Coming home — the homecoming. Coming up — the next item, the approaching event. Coming along — progress, recovery. Coming of age — the passage into adulthood. Coming through — delivering under pressure, or a radio signal breaking through static. The phrases are everyday, and the spelling is the same in all of them: one M.
There is also the adjective: coming meaning next or approaching. “The coming week.” “The coming election.” “In the coming years.” This use is the same word, doing a different job — naming the future rather than the motion. The spelling holds: one M, in the verb, the participle, and the adjective.
Come Drops Its E
Here is the spelling rule, and it is the same rule that governs a whole shelf of English words. When a word ends in a silent E and you add a suffix that begins with a vowel — -ing, -ed, -er, -est, -able — the silent E drops out. Come + -ing becomes coming, not comeing. Make + -ing becomes making. Write + -ing becomes writing. Shine + -y becomes shiny. In every case, the E drops and the suffix attaches directly to the stem.
The rule has a reason. The silent E exists to mark the vowel as long — come has a long O because the E is there. Once the suffix arrives, the E is no longer needed, because the suffix itself marks the syllable boundary. The E is a scaffolding letter: it holds the vowel long while the word stands alone, and it comes down when the building is finished.
There is a second step, and it is the one that causes the error. After the E drops, the writer must decide: does the final consonant double? The doubling rule says: double the consonant when the word is one syllable, ends in a single vowel + single consonant, and the stress is on that syllable. Run → running. Stop → stopped. Swim → swimming. But come does not qualify, because come ends in a silent E, not in a consonant after a vowel. The E-drop and the doubling are two different operations, and come gets the first but not the second. The E drops. The M stays single.
Why Fingers Double the M
So why does the hand write comming? Two forces. The first is the doubling rule itself, misapplied. A writer who has learned run → running and swim → swimming can reason that come must follow the same pattern. The reasoning is natural. It is also wrong, because come ends in a silent E, and the doubling rule applies to words that end in a consonant, not to words that end in E. The writer has applied the right rule to the wrong word.
The second force is the -mm- family. English has a group of words with double M in the middle: summer, hammer, common, comment, commit, swimming. A writer who hears the short O and the M in coming can reach for the familiar pattern and double the M. The guess is natural. It is also wrong, because coming is not from the -mm- family. It is come minus E plus -ing, and the M stays single through the whole operation.
There is also the pull of comming as a visual pattern: the double M looks balanced, the way running looks balanced. The eye likes symmetry, and the double M provides it. The spelling does not care about symmetry. It cares about the rule, and the rule says one M.
Coming vs Going, Coming vs Upcoming
Coming has close neighbors, and keeping them distinct sharpens a sentence. Coming describes motion toward the speaker. Going describes motion away from the speaker. “She is coming here” means she is moving toward me. “She is going there” means she is moving away from me. The two words are a pair, and the direction is the difference.
Upcoming is the adjective for something about to happen: “the upcoming election,” “an upcoming release.” It is more formal than coming and more specific — it names a scheduled event, not just a future. “The coming week” and “the upcoming week” are both correct, but upcoming sounds like a calendar, and coming sounds like a conversation. The choice is a matter of register.
There is also forthcoming — the adjective for something about to appear, or for a person who is open and communicative. “The forthcoming book.” “She was forthcoming about the problems.” The word is formal, slightly old-fashioned, and it carries a second meaning (open, frank) that coming does not. The neighbors overlap, but they are not identical, and the sentence improves when the word matches the meaning.
Coming in Phrases That Run the Language
Beyond the station, coming appears in a set of phrases that show its range. Coming of age — the passage from childhood to adulthood, and the genre of stories about it. Coming out — the debut, the disclosure, the announcement of identity. Coming to terms with — accepting something difficult. Coming to grips with — understanding something hard. Coming into its own — reaching maturity, fulfilling potential. Coming up short — failing to reach a target. Coming full circle — returning to the starting point.
Each phrase uses coming in its participle form, and each one spells it the same way: one M. The phrases are idiomatic — their meanings cannot be guessed from the parts — and they are among the most common idioms in English. A writer who misspells coming in one of them misspells a phrase the reader has seen a thousand times, and the error stands out precisely because the phrase is so familiar.
There is also the noun: a coming — an arrival, an advent. “The coming of spring.” “The Second Coming.” The noun is literary and slightly formal, and it carries a weight the verb does not. The Second Coming — the return of Christ in Christian theology — is the most famous use, and it is always spelled with one M.
The Grammar Behind the Board
The arrivals board’s coming is a present participle, and the present participle is one of the busiest forms in English. It builds the progressive tenses (“is coming,” “was coming,” “will be coming”), it works as an adjective (“the coming storm”), and it heads participial phrases (“Coming around the corner, she saw the station”). The form is the same in all three jobs, and the spelling is the same: one M.
There is a common error worth naming: confusing coming with come in the perfect tenses. “I have came” is wrong. “I have come” is right. The past participle of come is come, not came — one of the few verbs in English where the past tense and the past participle differ in this direction. The error is common in speech and in writing, and it is the kind of mistake that survives because it sounds almost right. The board says coming. The grammar book says have come. Both are worth remembering.
There is also the gerund: coming as a noun. “Her coming changed everything.” “The coming of the rains.” The gerund is the participle doing a noun’s job, and it follows the same spelling. The word’s flexibility — verb, adjective, noun — is part of why it appears so often, and why the single M matters in so many sentences.
The One-M Rule
Here is the lock-in, and it is the E-drop doing its work. Coming is come minus E plus -ing. The E drops. The M stays single. The doubling rule does not apply, because come ends in E, not in a consonant. When the word appears in your draft, look at the middle. If you see a double M — comming — the doubling rule has been misapplied. Delete one M. Com-ing. One M, one E dropped, and the arrivals board, the platform, and the reader all know exactly when the train gets in.
