number

In grammar, the feature of a noun, verb, or pronoun that denotes whether it is singular or plural. The number of a noun will determine the number of its verb; singular nouns and pronouns usually take a singular verb (‘The cat runs’), and plural nouns and pronouns usually take a plural verb (‘the cats run’).

In practice there is little difference between singular and plural in English verbs . In the past tense they are identical. In the present tense, the only difference is that the third person singular usually has an s on the end, whereas the plural and the first and second person singular do not: I come, he comes, they come. Exceptions to this are the modal verb or auxiliary verb, such as: can, may, will, which do not have an s in the third person singular (as in ‘she can’); and the verb to be, which has distinctive forms in the first and third person singular in both the present and the past tenses .

Some singular nouns which refer to groups of people or animals can take a plural verb. See collective noun.

It can often happen that another noun or pronoun comes between the verb and its grammatical subject. If this is different in number from the subject, it can affect the number of the verb; for example ‘The contents of the book submitted to our legal department has raised a few eyebrows’. The subject of the verb here is contents, not book or department, so the verb should be plural (have), not singular (has). Nouns and pronouns linked by ‘and’ can take a plural or a singular verb.

Measurements of quantity, distance, or similar, that contain a plural noun can be regarded as a single unit, and therefore take a singular verb: ‘Fifty pounds is too much to pay’; ‘Twenty miles is a long way to walk’.

There are some nouns ending in -s that take a singular verb, for example ‘the news is good’. They include the names of certain games (‘darts is my favourite game’) and the names of certain diseases (‘mumps is unpleasant for adult males to catch’). Some nouns ending in -s take a singular verb when they denote an area of study (‘acoustics is a tricky subject’) but a plural verb when the noun has a different meaning (‘the acoustics of the hall are very good’) .