Some nouns in English are countable, others are not. Some nouns only have a plural form. There are even some nouns which can be singular or plural, depending on the point of view of the speaker. The distinction between singular and plural is important, because when a noun is a subject in a sentence, the verb must agree with it, i.e. be in the correct form. For example, 'economics' is uncountable, even though it ends in 's'. You can say 'Economics is an interesting subject' but not 'Economics are an interesting subject.' However, 'scissors' is plural. You can say 'The scissors are sharp' but not 'The scissors is sharp'.

Let's practise!

The nouns you see below are either always plural or uncountable. Click on the arrow and choose the correct label.

A good dictionary will tell you whether a noun is uncountable or always plural:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/learner-english/

Anything which cannot be counted (e.g. liquids, materials) or only counted with difficulty (e.g. rice, sugar) behaves like a singular noun, e.g.

However, we can often count these 'uncountables' by using a 'counting' word, like 'bag', e.g. 'one bag of sugar'. Test your knowledge of these counting words on the right by matching them to the correct uncountable noun on the left. Type the appropriate counting words into each box. The first one has been done as an example.

Here are the sentences identified as incorrect in Practice 1. Can you rewrite them, correcting the countability mistakes?
Try to do this without looking at Practice 1. Make sure capitalisation, spelling, spacing and punctuation are all correct.