The word ‘plural’ comes from the Old French ‘plurel’ which means ‘more than one’. A noun is a word used to identify something.There are a lot of nouns.There are many patterns to look out for when you ...

When I saw “men’s’ clothing” with two apostrophes, I figured it must be a typo. I was editing a professional writer who’s been on the job for years, and I know from experience that writers make typos, ...

Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about English grammar and usage — most of which I promptly forgot. And not for lack of use. Every day I apply what I’ve learned to catch and fix writers’ mistakes.

Sign up for the daily CJR newsletter. Forming a plural is pretty easy, right? You just add an “s” to something. Unless, of course, it’s a word that already ends ...

When Vice President Dan Quayle "corrected" a student's spelling of "potato" to "potatoe" back in 1992, people laughed. But some of us might have trouble spelling its plural form. Is it "potatos" or ...

Sometimes a noun looks like it should be plural when it isn’t. Chances are that this noun is called a mass noun. Mass nouns are nouns that, by their very nature, are plural. These are also called ...

A noun is a word used to identify something.There are a lot of nouns.There are many patterns to look out for when you turn a noun into a plural noun.Let’s look at a few of these patterns. In some ...