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 ...

Could it be that these are animals that were hunted, fished, or herded and that there was a convention that used the singular as a sort of generic plural when going after these creatures for sport or ...

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.

In general, to form plurals in English, you add either -s or -es (and sometimes change a y to an i). But there are a number of words – including some you use every day – that don’t follow this rule.

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 ...

Forward reader Leon Chameides has been, so he writes, “troubled since Passover,” which is indeed a long time to be troubled. What is bothering him is “the grammatical construction of the tenth plague.

Ashley Mergen asks: "What is the proper plural of e-mail? When referring to snail mail, you would not say, 'I received a hundred mails,' but rather, 'I received a hundred pieces of mail' or 'I ...