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Noncount Nouns | Guides

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THE WRITING CENTER

Guides 

23 Ways to Improve Your Draft

Active and Passive Voice

Advice on Setting Up and Working with a Writing Group

Advice for Writing Personal Statements

All About Counterarguments

All About Resume Writing

APA Style Quick-Guide

Avoiding Fragments with Dependent Clauses

Brainstorming Techniques

Chicago Citation Style Quick-Guide

Choosing Between In nitive and Gerund: “To do” or “doing”?

Choosing the Correct Word Form

Cohesion and Coherence

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12/27/2020 The Writing Center | Count vs. Noncount Nouns | Guides

Combining Clauses to Avoid Comma Splices, Run-ons, and Fragments


Commas, Semicolons, and Colons

Common Writing Terms and Concepts De ned

Count vs. Noncount Nouns

Critical Reading

De nite and Inde nite Articles

Editing Checklist

A Guide to Annotated Bibliographies

Guidelines for Posting to Discussion Boards

Hedges: Softening Claims in Academic Writing

How to Edit Your Own Essay: Strategies for ESL Students

How to Write a Research Question

Improving Cohesion: The "Known/New Contract"

Introduction Sections in Scienti c Research Reports (IMRaD)

Conclusion Sections in Scienti c Research Reports (IMRaD)

Introductions and Conclusions for Humanities Papers

MLA 7 v. MLA 8: What’s di erent?

MLA Citation Style Quick-Guide

Modal Verbs

News Writing Fundamentals

Online Resources for Improving Grammar and Word Choice in Writing

Organizational Maps

Outlining

Overview

Parallel Structure

Plagiarism

Prepositions

Problem Proposals

Pronouns

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Proper Nouns

Providing Feedback to Writers

Quotation, Paraphrase, Summary, and Analysis

Reducing Informality in Academic Writing

Reverse Outlining

Revising

Rhetoric

Run-on Sentences

Same Form, but Di erent Functions: Various Meanings of Verb+ing and Verb+ed

Searching for Sources on the Mason Library Databases

Sending Email to Faculty and Administrators

Signal Phrases

Strategies for Reading Academic Articles

Subject-Verb Agreement

Taking In-Class Essay Exams

Thesis Statements

The Three Common Tenses Used in Academic Writing

Tips for Active Reading

Tips for Note Taking

Transitions

Turabian Style Quick-Guide

Understanding Your Instructor’s Prompt

Using Reduced Relative Clauses to Write Concisely

Verb Tenses

When to Summarize, Paraphrase, and Quote

Word Bank of Business Terms

Word Order in Statements with Embedded Questions

Writer's Block

Writing an Abstract

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Writing Business Letters


Writing Business Memos

Writing Concisely

Writing Cover Letters

Writing E ective Talking Points

Writing a Scienti c Research Report (IMRaD)

Writing a Literature Review

Writing Personal Statements for Health Professions

Writing a PowerPoint Presentation

Writing Your First Sentence

IMRaD Method Section

IMRaD Results Discussion

Online Resources for Improving Word Choice and Grammar

Personal Statements for Graduate School Applications

An Introduction to Strategies for Structuring and Writing Reviews of the Literature

APA Style Quick-Guide

Algunos recursos en línea para la gramática y el vocabulario en español

Los tiempos y los modos verbales

Los artículos

Organizing Literature Reviews

Abstracts in Scienti c Research Papers (IMRaD)

Revising Prose for Concision: 10 Tips

Signposting Language for Improving Cohesion

Count vs. Noncount Nouns

Before forming plurals correctly, it is important to understand the di erence between count and
noncount nouns.

Count nouns are the nouns that we can physically count (e.g. one table, two tables, three tables),
so they make a distinction between singular and plural forms.

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Noncount nouns are the nouns that cannot be counted, and they do not make a distinction
between singular and plural forms. Although these nouns may refer to large quantities of things,

they act like singular nouns grammatically.

Noncount nouns:

Never take the plural ending “s”

Always take a singular verb
Cannot be used with the inde nite article “a/an” and are frequently used with no article at
all
Are used with collective quantity words like “a lot of,” “some,” “any,” “much,” or “more,”
instead of count words like “many,” “several,” “two,” or “few.”

If you work on an academic paper, keep these noncount nouns in mind because they are often
misused: money, research, advice, knowledge, information, and evidence (NOT moneys,
researches, advices, etc.).

The following categories of words frequently contain noncount nouns:

Category Words Examples

Abstractions Beauty, revenge, Ignorance causes poverty.

knowledge, progress,
poverty

Liquids and gases water, beer, air, gasoline, Gas is cheaper than oil.
milk Wine is my favorite
beverage.

Materials gold, silver, wood, glass, He had a will made of iron.

san Gold is more valuable than
silver.

Categories of food rice, our, cheese, salt, Bread is delicious.

yogur Meat and cheese are
sources of protein.

Languages French, English, Korean Navejo is a complex

language. Do you speak

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German?

Academic elds physics, astronomy, music Philosophy is a di cult
subject. My brother is
majoring in biology.

Sports and games tennis, golf, basketball Do you play chess? Soccer
is becoming more popular
in America.

Weather fog, wind, snow Severe drought can cause

famine.
The city of Bu alo gets
more snow than most cities
in New York state.

Natural phenomena gravity, nuclear energy, Electricity is a form of

magnetism energy. Newton discovered
the principles of gravity.

Gerunds (verbal nouns) running, singing, smoking Swimming is excellent

exercise. Sleeping during
class is not recommended.

Groups of things of varying jewelry, garbage, luggage, Fine jewelry is expensive.

size and shape equipment Trash was thrown
everywhere i the room.

 
More rules for noncount nouns:

Rule Explanation Example

How do you denote a Use count nouns such as Ten pieces of jewelry were
speci c number or piece, ton, cup, etc. paired stolen.
with of and a plural verb.
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quantity of noncount
nouns?


What about general Use general words such as We need to do more

quantities? more, much, a lot of, less, research.
and a large quantity of, but
A lot of valuable
keep your noncount noun
information is contained in
singular.
this paper.

What if the noncount noun As soon as you specify a The beauty of the night was
is de nite? noncount noun by overwhelming.
attaching a de ning phrase
The information that you
to it, you must use the just
gave me was valuable.
as you would with any
other noun.
(VS. Information is
valuable.)

Do some non-count nouns Yes, some noncounts This news is important.

take the ending –s? nouns, for example news,
Physics is my favorite
physics, and species, end in
subject.
–s. This ending, however, is
not a plural ending – this is
simply the way a noun
ends. These words will take
a singular verb as any
other non-count verb.

Note: Some nouns can be used as either non-count or count nouns, and the meaning of these
nouns changes slightly depending on the form being used. The non-count form refers to the
whole idea or quantity, whereas the count noun refers to a speci c example or type.

Noncount Count

(1a) Linguistics is the study of language. (1b) Some languages, like English and
Spanish, are international.
(2a) To paint requires a lot of work.

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(2b) This painting is a work of art.

(3a) This wine is delicious.

(3b) The wines of France are famous.

Adapted from: Grammar Choices for Graduate and Professional Writers by Nigel A. Caplan

Download the PDF of this guide for a practice worksheet

Download this guide as a PDF

Return to all guides

Grammar & Style

Avoiding Fragments with Dependent Clauses
Active and Passive Voice
Choosing Between In nitive and Gerund: “To do” or “doing”?
Choosing the Correct Word Form
Combining Clauses to Avoid Comma Splices, Run-ons, and Fragments
Commas, Semicolons, and Colons
Count vs. Noncount Nouns
De nite and Inde nite Articles
Improving Cohesion: The "Known/New Contract"
Modal Verbs
Parallel Structure
Prepositions
Pronouns
Proper Nouns
Reducing Informality in Academic Writing
Run-on Sentences
Same Form, but Di erent Functions: Various Meanings of Verb+ing and Verb+ed
Subject-Verb Agreement
The Three Common Tenses Used in Academic Writing
Using Reduced Relative Clauses to Write Concisely
Verb Tenses
Word Order in Statements with Embedded Questions

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12/27/2020 The Writing Center | Count vs. Noncount Nouns | Guides

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