Mouse - Mice, House - Hice? No! Making Sense of Plurals.

So, today we are going to take a look at some rules we can follow to help us use the correct ending when we are talking, or writing, about plural nouns.

1.    You can make many nouns plural simply by adding an “s” to them. So for example if someone says “the dog was black and white”, you know they are talking of one dog. However, if they were to say “the dogs are black and white”, whilst you do not know how many dogs they are referring to, you know there are more than one.

EXAMPLES

SINGULAR	PLURAL
pencil	pencils
house	houses
lamp	lamps
car	cars
hat	hats

2.    For other nouns you need to add an “es” to make plural. This is particularly true (but not exclusively) to nouns ending in “s”, “ss”, “sh”, “ch” or “x”.

EXAMPLES

SINGULAR	PLURAL
kiss	kisses
sandwich	sandwiches
fox	foxes
bus	buses
wish	wishes

3.    If a noun ends in a vowel followed by a “y” add “s” to make its plural form.

EXAMPLES

SINGULAR	PLURAL
boy	boys
key	keys
tray	trays
trolley	trolleys
monkey	monkeys

Nouns that can be made plural by adding an “s” or “es” to their singular form are known as regular nouns.

However there are some nouns that do not follow the add an “s” or “es” rule. These are known as irregular nouns.  

4.    Let’s think about nouns that end in a consonant followed by “y”. To make these plural the “y” is dropped and replaced with “ies”.

EXAMPLES

SINGULAR	PLURAL
lady	ladies
family	families
city	cities
baby	babies
party	parties

5.    For nouns that end in “f” or “fe” make plural by changing the “f” or “fe” to “v” and then add “es”.

EXAMPLES

SINGULAR	PLURAL
life	lives
loaf	loaves
wife	wives
shelf	shelves
thief	thieves

6.    As you have probably guessed, this being English, there are some irregular nouns that do not fit into these rules at all. Their plural takes on a whole new ending!   

EXAMPLES

SINGULAR	PLURAL
man	men
woman	women
child	children
person	people
tooth	teeth
foot	feet
mouse	mice
goose	geese
diagnosis	diagnoses
crisis	crises
cactus	cacti
ox	oxen

 

  

7.    Of course we mustn't forget that there are some nouns that are the same whether singular or plural!

EXAMPLES

SINGULAR	PLURAL
sheep	sheep
aircraft	aircraft
fish	fish
species	species
deer	deer

  

I hope these guidelines help to make it a little easier to work out which is the correct way to make your noun into a plural.

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