Things You Can / Can't Count
Count Nouns and Noncount Nouns
Noncount Nouns
Noncount nouns take the singular form of the verb. Remember to use both 'some' and any' when discussing specific objects in your home or office.
Example:
Christopher has some expertise with expansion card installations.
Mr. Courbet has some anxiety about converting his paintings into ASCII images.
The employee has some fear of unexpected email attachments.
Do not use determiners (a, the, these, etc.) when speaking in general.
Example:
Traffic shaping techniques play an important role in any ISP's corporate culture.
The clipboard software has advocates in many companies.
Count Nouns
Count nouns take the plural form of the verb. Remember to use both 'some' and any' when discussing specific objects in your home or office.
Example:
There are some commands that we only input on the backend.
There are some bugs that can lead to a fatal error when we run this script.
There are some questions included in our FAQ that we need to rewrite this afternoon.
Do not use determiners (a, the, these, etc.) when speaking in general. Use the plural form of count nouns to discuss these objects in general.
Example:
Apple's politics made the idea of a clone distasteful.
This chat session had participants all around the world.