Nouns: singular and plural

Regular and irregular plurals

Nouns can be regular and irregular depending on how plurals are formed

Regular plurals

Singular	Plural	Spelling
a book a boy a plate	books boy s plate s	+ s
a fox a bench	foxes bench es	+ es (after s, x, sh, ch)
a dictionary a story	dictionaries stor ies	consonant+y: y + ies

1.1 Add -s, -es, or -ies to make plural nouns.

Examples

It’s a book. They are books.

It’s a dictionary. They are dictionaries.

With two-word nouns add -s (or -es, ies) to the second word. 

Examples

a car park - car parks

a credit card - credit cards

1.2 Some nouns in English don’t take -s and change the form.

Irregular plurals

Singular	Plural
a man	men
a woman	women
a child	children
a person	people