Singular and Plural Nouns

Today, I picked up a few thing at the stores, and then I picked up my childs at school. Just a
regular day in my lifes, like many other daies!

As the problems in that sentence demonstrate, it's important to pay attention to whether the
nouns we use are singular or plural and to know how to make nouns plural the right way.

Most nouns are easily made plural, but as with a lot of things in the English language, there
are a few nouns for which different rules apply.

Plural Nouns
You may know that a noun identifies a person, place, thing, or idea.

A singular noun names one person, place, thing, or idea, while a plural noun names more than
one person, place, thing, or idea.

There are a few basic rules to remember when it comes to turning a singular noun into a plural
noun.

1. Most singular nouns need an 's' at the end to become plural.

These are the easy ones. You can just add an 's' to alien, taco, or skateboard, for example, and
you instantly have aliens, tacos, and skateboards.

There's a second rule for nouns that end with certain letters.

2. Singular nouns ending in 's', 'ss', 'sh', 'ch', 'x', or 'z' need an 'es' at the end to become plural.

So, if you have a secretive, alcoholic octopus drinking wine from a glass behind a bush, and
you decide that one of those just isn't enough, you'd have two octopuses drinking from glasses
behind bushes.

The same would be true for a crutch, a box, and a blintz, which would become crutches,
boxes, and blintzes.

Note that some singular nouns ending in 's' or 'z' require that you double the 's' or 'z' before
adding an 'es'. For example, a really bad day might involve you having not one pop quiz, but
two pop quizzes.

Irregular Plural Nouns

And then, there are a lot of nouns with weird rules for becoming plural.

3. Some nouns are the same in both their singular and plural forms.

So I can have one deer or two deer - or one sheep or two sheep. Or I might be hooked on one
T.V. series or two T.V. series.

4. Some nouns ending in 'f' require that you change the 'f' to a 'v' and then add an 'es' at the
end to make them plural.
For example, you might have not just one elf sneaking into your house on Christmas night,
but two elves.

The English language loves to have exceptions, though, so the houses in your neighborhood
have roofs, not rooves, and your wacky old uncle has crazy beliefs, not believes.

5. Nouns that end in 'y' often require that you change the 'y' to an 'i', and then add an 'es' at the
end to make them plural.

So while you may enjoy making silly faces at a stranger's baby, you may not be thrilled to find
yourself surrounded by strangers' babies on a long flight.

English wouldn't be half as fun without lots of little exceptions, and there's one with this rule.
Luckily there's a tip to help us out with this one.

With a noun that ends with 'y', if there's a vowel ('a, e, i, o, u') right before the 'y', then you
just add an 's' at the end to make the noun plural.

For example, I'm not certain, but it seems like it would be a lot of fun to ride on an airplane
surrounded by monkeys or toys.

This next one doesn't come up all that often, but it's a good one to remember. Most people
don't get it right, so you'll be pretty impressive when you show that you know how it's done.