Common Grammar Mistakes Part Three: Problematic Plurals

Many people struggle with plurals, and it's no wonder! It's not as simple as adding an 's' to every word. Sometimes you use 'es', and sometimes you change the whole ending of the word. To top that off, the presence of plurals change other words in your sentence, and that can vary depending on the type of plural! This article will provide a brief overview of the basics, then help you with some of the more difficult plural constructions. If you don't know how to make a word plural, check the dictionary.

The Basics

• Most nouns are made plural simply by adding an s to the end.
• For words that end in ch, x, s or s-like sounds, you will need to add an es.
• The above two rules apply to proper names.
• If the word ends in y with a consonant before the y, change the y to ie and add an s. If there is a vowel before the y, simply add s.
• Some plurals will need to be memorized because the ending of the word is changed (knife/knives or child/children)
• The only time an apostrophe is used to make a plural is when you are using lower case letters as a word unto themselves, such as "The typewriter isn't making n's anymore." However, some style guides indicate that you should also use an apostrophe when pluralizing abbreviations (like UFO's) or numbers (like 80's). This is up for debate, so choose which method you like best and be consistent.

Collective Nouns

A collective noun is one that encompasses a group of objects, such as people or things, like class, band, or family. These words are already plural in themselves, but can also be pluralized if you're talking about more than one group. The difficult thing about collective nouns is how to handle the rest of the sentence.

If you are speaking of the group as a whole, or discussing an action that the whole group took, think of the group as a single entity and treat the collective noun as singular. For example:

1. The class was taken on a field trip.

2. The group of nuns was at the church (note: even though nuns is plural, the subject of the sentence is group, and you're speaking of the group as a single unit).

3. The majority was in favor of the resolution.