nouns – Almost An Author

What are Nouns?

This time we’ll discuss nouns. Nouns can be common or proper. A common noun is a person, place, or thing. A noun also includes a quality, an idea, or an action. A proper noun is a specific person, place, or thing.

A church sits at the curve of the road. We have three common nouns in that sentence—church, curve, and road.
Love Memorial Church sits on the curve of Rains Mill Road. Notice the changes in this sentence. Church has become specific by being named. When it is specific, it’s capitalized. The same thing happens to road. Curve is still common and doesn’t take a capital letter.

Nouns are typically used in a sentence as the subject, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition. In the first sentence, church is the subject. Curve and road are objects of the prepositions at and of.

We ate the chocolate mousse before dinner. In this sentence, mousse is the object of ate.

An important thing to remember is to capitalize proper nouns.

I took a math class. Math or class isn’t capitalized because it’s not specific.
Breanna almost failed Calculus III in high school. Calculus is capitalized because it’s the specific name of a class.

Exceptions to capitalizing courses are language classes. Always capitalize language classes like English, Chinese, and Arabic.

Nouns are pretty easy to understand, but they’re also very important in a sentence. Having a handle on what nouns do will help you understand more complex grammar points later.

Happy writing!

When 2 + 2 Still Don’t = 4

Now that you’ve mastered the basics of plurals (see 2 + 2 Doesn’t Always = 4), let’s look at some more exceptions to the rules of pluralization.

For some reason, proper nouns or names often trip folks up. There’s no need, really. The plurals of proper names, including family names that end in s follow the same rules as regular nouns: add s or es.

A month of Sundays
The two Germanys reunited in the 1990s.
All the Johnnys and Marys raised their hands.

The same pluralization rules apply to family names as to regular nouns – add s, or in the case of proper nouns/names that end in s, x, z, ch, or sh, add es:

The Kennedys aspired to public service.
The Browns vacationed in Hawaii.
The Joneses live on Pleasant Avenue.
The Martinezes have four children.

BUT nicknamed geographical terms:

Rocky Mountains becomes the Rockies
Smokey Mountains becomes the Smokies

You will often see proper names pluralized with an apostrophe s, but don’t you try it. Adding an apostrophe makes nouns possessive, not plural.

We should also talk about letters, numerals, and abbreviations as well as common phrases used as nouns. If you follow the KISS rule (Keep It Simple, Sweetie), you will be right 99 percent of the time:

Add an s to abbreviations such as CDs, JPEGs, IRAs, and FAQs

BUT when lower case letters are forming plurals, use an apostrophe (only to aid comprehension).

Mind your p’s and q’s
Dot your i’s and cross your t’s

Add an s to numerals, including years or decades such as: 7s, 1990s, 1000s

Some hyphenated words or phrases are not nouns, but can be used as nouns; these form a plural by adding s.

Ifs, ands, or buts
Thank-yous
Twos and threes
Dos and don’ts

And finally, those lovely words we’ve adopted from the classical Latin and Greek. Although these plurals may not come naturally to most English speakers, they do follow a pattern.

Greek

Singular ending	Plural ending
on (criterion, phenomenon)	a (criteria, phenomena)
ma (stigma)	mata (stigmata)

Latin

Singular endings	Plural endings
a (alumna, larva)	ae (alumni, larvae)
us (fungus, radius)	ii (fungii, radii)
um (datum, memorandum)	a (data, memoranda)
is (basis, thesis)	es (bases, theses)
x (matrix)	ce (matrice)

And when all else fails, do what I do. Refer to the dictionary. You do keep one handy, don’t you?