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The plural of individual letters is usually written with -'s: [22] there are two h's in this sentence; mind your p's and q's; dot the i's and cross the t's. Some people extend this use of the apostrophe to other cases, such as plurals of numbers written in figures (e.g. "1990's"), words used as terms (e.g. "his writing uses a lot of but's").
In English, the plural form of words ending in -us, especially those derived from Latin, often replaces -us with -i. There are many exceptions, some because the word does not derive from Latin, and others due to custom ( e.g. , campus , plural campuses ).
Singular forms simply remove the final s or, in the case of -ese endings, are the same as the plural forms. The ending -men has feminine equivalent -women (e.g. Irishman , Scotswoman ). The French terminations -ois / -ais serve as both the singular and plural masculine ; adding e ( -oise / -aise ) makes them singular feminine; es ( -oises ...
The plural genitive did not use the "-es" inflection, [9] and since many plural forms already consisted of the "-s" or "-es" ending, using the apostrophe in place of the elisioned "e" could lead to singular and plural possessives of a given word having the exact same spelling.
The plural form of a noun is usually created by adding the suffix-(e)s. The pronouns have irregular plurals, as in "I" versus "we", because they are ancient and frequently used words going back to when English had a well developed system of declension. English verbs distinguish singular from plural number in the third person present tense ("He ...
Singular masculine and neuter nouns of the strong declension in the genitive case are marked with -(e)s. Generally, one-syllable nouns favour the -es ending, and it is obligatory with nouns ending with a sibilant such as s or z. Otherwise, a simple -s ending is usual. Feminine and plural nouns remain uninflected:
A reduplicated plural is a grammatical form achieved by the superfluous use of a second plural ending. In English the plural is usually formed with the addition of 's': e.g. one cat, two cats; one chair, two chairs.
The possessive form of an English noun, or more generally a noun phrase, is made by suffixing a morpheme which is represented orthographically as ' s (the letter s preceded by an apostrophe), and is pronounced in the same way as the regular English plural ending (e)s: namely, as / ɪ z / when following a sibilant sound (/ s /, / z /, / ʃ /, / ʒ /, / tʃ / or / dʒ /), as / s / when following ...