Los Angeles Times

A Word, Please: A simple rule for nouns that are singular and plural at the same time

The couple is going to purchase the house? Or the couple are going to purchase the house? Even after all my years of editing, I can still get tripped up trying to make verbs agree with collective ...
Los Angeles Times

A Word, Please: Nominalizations make nouns out of verbs and adjectives, sometimes to ill effect

Before 2006, I never gave much thought to nominalizations — noun forms like “beauty” and “the scheduling” that at heart are really adjectives like “beautiful” or verbs like “to schedule.” I was ...
THE WEEK

11 nouns that only have a plural form

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 ...
Miami University

Word Form

It is sometimes difficult to choose one word over the other when they look very similar while differing by a few letters and belong to the same part of speech. It is important to remember that such ...