Third Person Singular Forms in Present Simple

Today we’ll be talking about the third person:

OK, maybe not the third person in the picture, but rather about the grammatical third person singular.

As compared to many other languages, verb inflection, or conjugation, in English is pretty easy. For example, in the Present Simple tense all personal forms are the same as the infinitive, or maybe almost all. The one that differs slightly is the third person singular where you add the ending –s. Yes, I know, there are some verbs that do not follow this rule, like the verb to be, which has quite a few different forms in all the particular person and number combinations, or the verb to have which has the form has in third person singular. A whole group of exceptions to this rule are modal verbs that do not take any ending in the third person singular.

Regular third person singular forms

That said, the general rule is to put an –s at the end in the third person singular. Have a look:

+ s

walk	→	he walks
swim	→	she swims
look	→	it looks
play	→	he plays

As you can see, this rule is pretty simple. But, yes, I probably would not write a post about it if it were that simple. There are, however, a couple of situations when the third person singular form is made in a slightly different way. Let’s have a look at them now.

Verbs ending in –s, –z, -ss, -zz, –x, –sh, –ch, -tch

If the verb (the infinitive form of the verb) ends in a hissing sound, most often written as –s, -z,, -ss, -zz, -x, -sh, -ch or –tch, adding just –s in the third person singular would cause the forms to be very hard to pronounce. In such cases you add the ending –es, which is pronounced /ɪz/, just like the plural ending –es used in similar situations. Here are some examples:

+ es

toss	→	she tosses
buzz	→	he buzzes
fix	→	it fixes
wash	→	she washes
teach	→	he teaches
match	→	it matches

Verbs ending in –o after consonant     

The same rule applies when the verb ends in –o. The ending to add is –es as well:

+ es

go	→	he goes
do /duː/	→	she does /dʌz/
echo	→	it echoes
veto	→	she vetoes

By the way, watch the pronunciation of do and does, which is irregular.

Verbs ending in –y after consonant     

Another similarity between plural forms of nouns and the third person singular in present tense of verbs is that if the form ends in –y preceded by a consonant, it changes to ie. Apart from this change, the general rule applies, so we add the ending –s. Some examples:

y → ie + s

try	→	he tries
cry	→	she cries
fry	→	it fries
study	→	she studies

Exceptions

Besides the rules discussed above, there are some exceptions. For example, if the verb ends in a hissing sound, which is written as a single consonant letter after a single vowel letter, the final –s or –z (these two letters meet the condition just described) should be doubled. It works just like with plural forms of nouns that end in such a letter. And usually it is the case. But there are some words where doubling the final consonant is optional. The first example below is such a verb. Besides, there are verbs that end in –o and take just –s in the third person singular, instead of –es. Here are some exceptions like the ones described above:

bus	→	he buses / busses
quiz	→	she quizzes
disco	→	he discos

I hope this article made it easier for you to use the correct verb forms in the present tense.