One or Many
Things you can count in a row, beside things you can only pour.
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If you can line them up and number them, the word takes an S. If it pours, it does not.
Plain words for technology topics, and the countable and uncountable traps that are common in this area.
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Ten technology words. Five of them have no plural at all.
Does "device" take an S?
Why technology vocabulary is the worst field for this, and the one test that resolves it.
Some nouns are things you can count. You can put a number in front and an S on the end:
one device, two devices · three screens · a hundred users
Some nouns are a substance or a mass. You cannot count them, so no number and no S:
some software · a lot of data · useful information
The test is simply: can you put a number in front of it?
Two softwares — no. Two devices — yes. That is the whole thing.
Things you can count in a row, beside things you can only pour.
If you can line them up and number them, the word takes an S. If it pours, it does not.
Sixteen words. Which ones can you put a number in front of?
Sort each item into the correct category
Three decisions. Try the number test before you answer.
Chain 1
The sentence: Most households now own several ___ .
The word: device
Can a number go in front?
So the answer is:
Chain 2
The sentence: The company produces ___ for hospitals.
The word: software
Can a number go in front?
So the answer is:
Chain 3
The sentence: The survey collected a great deal of ___ about travel habits.
The word: data
Can a number go in front?
So the answer is:
A Task 2 paragraph — some gaps need an S and some must not have one.
Most households now own several — a phone each, a laptop, and often a tablet as well. What has changed is not the number of machines but the amount of running on them: banking, transport and health services have all moved onto a screen.
That shift has left some people behind. Older adults are far less likely to use an to book an appointment, and in rural areas the is often too slow to load one at all.
Hospitals now collect an enormous amount of about their patients, and the shows that outcomes improve when records are shared between departments. But the same systems make privacy harder to protect, because every of the system can in principle see more than they need to.
My own view is that governments should fund the needed to get everyone connected before moving any more services online.