Plural Noun rules

A noun identifies a person, place animal or thing.

A singular noun names one person, place, animal or thing.

Plural noun names more than one person, place animal or thing. When we talk about more than one of anything, we use plural nouns. Writing the plural nouns follows certain rules. While most plural nouns are written by using the same word and adding ‘s’ to it in the end, there are certain words formats where we add es, ies or ves in the end. And there are words that are the exception to these rules as well.

It is important to know these plural noun rules because nouns are used so frequently in the English language. The spelling of the plural noun usually depends on the letter the singular noun ends in.

We shall be discussing 7 plural noun rules today and towards the end of this post, you can download the pdf file for these rules.

 

Plural rule one – To make the plural of the regular noun, add -s to the end.

bag – bags

boy- boys

town- towns

cat- cats

In the above noun worksheet, add -s to make the plural of the word. Then, read the sentences and circle the correct noun.

 

 

Plural rule two – If a singular noun ends with ch, sh, s, ss, x or z, add -es to make it plural.

bus -buses

bench- benches

brush- brushes

tax- taxes

dress- dresses

Sometimes, for words ending with z, we have to double the z before adding -es to make it plural.

quiz- quizzes

Plural rule three- If a singular noun ends in a -y, see the letter before the -y. If it is a consonant, change the ‘y’ to an ‘i’ before adding an -es.

candy- candies

puppy- puppies

 

 

Do try this addictive plural nouns card game which is a fun way of revisiting plural nouns. Click on the above image to download it.

 

 

 

Plural rule four- If a singular noun ends in a -y, see the letter before the -y. If it is a vowel, add -s to make it plural.

donkey- donkeys

trolley- trolleys

valley- valleys

 

 

 

Plural rule five- If a singular noun ends with f or fe, we replace the f or fe with ves.

calf- calves

hoof- hooves

thief- thieves

wife- wives

There are exceptions to this rule. For certain words ending with f, we just add ‘s’ to make it plural.

roof- roofs

chief- chiefs

dwarf- dwarfs

 

 

 

Plural rule six- For certain singular nouns, a word may completely change its form when a plural is made.

person- people

fungus- fungi

foot- feet

 

 

 

 

Plural rule seven- Some nouns do not change when pluralized. They use the same singular and plural form.

deer-deer

series- series

jeans- jeans

I have an addictive plural nouns game printable on my website. It’s free and can be downloaded by clicking here.

 

 

 

This ‘plural nouns’ pack is a subscriber freebie.

You can also check my website for more free resources on nouns.