Countable and Uncountable
Things you can put a number beside, and things you can only measure.
Click to zoom
On the left you count. On the right you can only measure — so you need a piece of, a great deal of, a sum of.
Stop adding -s to nouns that can't be counted, one of the easiest mistakes for a reader to spot.
Preview · progress not saved — Chapter 1 is free
Ten words. Two take an S, six never do, and two change meaning if they do.
Can "advice" take a plural S?
Eight very common words that never take an S — and how to say "more than one" anyway.
Can you put a number in front of it?
one idea, two ideas ✅ → countable
one advice, two advices ❌ → uncountable
You met that test in Sprint 6.2 with technology words. This sprint applies it to a different set — the ones that appear in every piece of writing you produce.
That frequency is the whole point. Advice, information, money, work, news are not specialist words. They turn up several times per essay, so a single wrong habit produces several visible errors in every response.
Things you can put a number beside, and things you can only measure.
On the left you count. On the right you can only measure — so you need a piece of, a great deal of, a sum of.
Fifteen nouns. Two of them belong in a group of their own.
Sort each item into the correct category
Three sentences that need a number — and none of the words will take one.
Chain 1
You want to say: she gave me three separate suggestions. The word you must use is advice.
The counter word:
So the phrase is:
Chain 2
You want to say: the report contained several separate facts. The word you must use is information.
The counter word:
So the phrase is:
Chain 3
You want to say: the news was surprising. Which verb form is correct?
The verb:
Because:
A paragraph with eight countability errors. Two apparent errors are correct — leave them.
Before I moved abroad, several people gave me (advices) about what to expect, and I found most of it useful.
The hardest part was finding reliable (informations) about renting. Websites contradicted each other, and the (news) — was / were — always about the capital rather than smaller cities.
The university lent me some (equipments) for the first month, which saved a great deal of (moneys).
The (traffics) in the city is far worse than I expected, and I now have a lot of (works) to do each evening simply because commuting takes so long.
On the other hand, the (foods) here is excellent, and I have picked up several (ideas) about cooking that I would never have found at home. My colleagues have also made a number of practical (suggestions) about managing the commute.