Page 122 - How to write effective business English your guide to excellent professional communication by Fiona Talbot

Punctuation and grammar tips 111

Forming plurals of nouns

As you will know, most nouns have a singular form (to denote one)
and a plural (to denote more than one). There are exceptions, such
as training and information. The standard way of forming plurals
from singular nouns is to add ‘s’. But this doesn’t always work, as
in the case of ‘child, children’, ‘lady, ladies’, ‘foot, feet’, to mention
a few. So do refer to mainstream English grammar advice if you
need more help with this.
There is one point that I would like to address here, as it arises
so often, amongst all writers. It concerns the wrong use of an apos-
trophe followed by ‘s’ to signify a plural meaning. For example,
‘tomato’s’ and ‘company’s’. The correct plurals are ‘tomatoes’ and
‘companies’.

Activity: Do you or your colleagues find any aspects of
punctuation and grammar a challenge? It’s well worth jotting down
any points you feel you could work on individually, or as teams.

Vowels and consonants

In written English, ‘a, e, i, o, u’ are the standard vowels. The re-
maining letters in the alphabet are consonants.

The definite and indefinite article

The word ‘the’ is called the definite article and has the same form
in singular and plural. The words ‘a’ and ‘an’ are known as the in-
definite article and only exist in the singular. For the plural, English
uses the word ‘some’.
Non-native English writers can be confused about when to use
the definite or indefinite article. A general guideline to help is this:
when you’re referring to something in general, use ‘a’ before a
word beginning with a consonant or ‘an’ before a word beginning
with a vowel. (Once again though, true to form, English has excep-
tions: some native speakers would say ‘an hotel’.)