In the animal kingdom, more than one moose are still moose, while a mongoose and his friends are mongooses, yet a goose and her flock are geese. Go figure. An error ...

We all enjoy some alone time, but some words don’t have that luxury. The English language has “oodles” of words that are in the plural form, with an “s” on the end. “Odds” are you know a few. It was ...

I fielded a question recently about “minding your p’s and q’s.” I had used that expression in a column a few weeks ago, and it prompted an email from a reader named Christine who was curious about ...

A natural follow-up to my last column about words that live in the plural seemed to be one about words that don't get the regular "s" at the end. Certain words shun the final "s" to become plural.

The word data leaves some of us in a conundrum. Data is the plural of datum, the Latin word for something given. Ordinarily, the plural word would get a plural verb. The chickens are on their nests.

Q. We all know that the plural of the word “mouse” is “mice.” However, if I write the word “mouse” 10 times on a piece of paper, would you then refer to them collectively as “mice” or “mouses”? Also, ...

Of all the grammar concepts we have, "plural" seems to be one of the most straightforward. You got one thing? It's singular. Got more than one thing? It's plural. But alas, language is always less ...

Algae thrives in sunlight. Or is it algae thrive? These are the questions that can broadside a copy editor years, even decades, into her career. When it comes to English, there’s never a point where ...

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 ...

Is the verb after the phrase ‘number of’ singular or plural? A simple rule is that if ‘the’ precedes the phrase ‘number of’, then the verb after the phrase is singular. For example, n The number of ...