Editing Guide to technical writing (section)

==Singular and plural forms==

Forming the plural in English can be tricky.  Normally the plural is formed by putting 's' and sometimes 'es' on the end of the singular word. Special cases to watch out for are as follows.

===Irregular plurals===
There  are a number of tricky plurals that are not formed by simply adding 's' or 'es' on the end of the singular word. Some typical cases you may need in your thesis are as follows.

* Abscissa vs. abscissae
* Analysis vs. analyses
* Antenna vs. antennas  (not antennae for engineering!) 
* Appendix vs. appendices 
* Automaton vs. automata
* Axis vs. axes
* Basis vs. bases

* Child vs. children
* Criterion vs. criteria 
* Corpus vs. corpora
* Datum vs. data
* Die vs. dice
* Emphasis vs. emphases
* Equilibrium vs. equilibria
* Extremum vs. extrema
* Focus vs. foci
* Foot vs. feet
* Formula vs. formulae or formulas
* Half vs. halves
* Hypothesis vs. hypotheses
* Knife vs. knives
* Index vs. indices
* Locus vs. loci
* Man vs. men
* Matrix vs. matrices
* Maximum vs. maxima
* Medium vs. media
* Memorandum vs. memoranda
* Minimum vs. minima
* Modulus vs. moduli
* ''Modus operandi'' vs. ''modi operandi''
* Nucleus vs. nuclei
* Optimum vs. optima
* Person vs. people
* Phenomenon vs. phenomena
* Polyhedron vs. polyhedra
* Quantum vs. quanta
* Radius vs. radii
* Radix vs. radices
* Schema vs. schemata
* Simplex vs. simplices
* Spectrum vs. spectra
* Stimulus vs. stimuli
* Stratum vs. strata
* Syllabus vs. syllabi
* Synopsis vs. synopses
* Synthesis vs. syntheses
* Thesis vs. theses
* Tooth vs. teeth
* Vortex vs. vortices
* Woman vs. women

===Countable objects where the plural and singular are identical===

There are some rare cases where singular and plural are the same. Examples are as follows.

* Advice
* Aircraft
* Corps
* Crossroads
* Equipment
* Fish
* Forceps
* Furniture
* Headquarters
* Hovercraft
* Information
* Knowledge
* Luggage
* News
* Offspring
* Poetry
* Series
* Spacecraft
* Species
* Sheep

===Uncountable objects===

If something cannot be counted then in English there is no plural (even if there is a plural when translating from another language). Nouns such as 'water' and 'oxygen' are uncountable so we keep these singular.  Also 'work' and 'research' are uncountable. Many students  
make the mistake of trying to force 'research' to be countable and incorrectly write 'researches'. This is sounds strange to a native English speaker. If you want to force it to be countable you should write 'research studies' or simply 'studies' will do.

Some words can sometimes be countable and sometimes be uncountable; for example you might say 'I heard strange noises in the night'. These are countable because you heard a number of sounds that you can count.  However, when talking about a noise signal in engineering it is  uncountable so we do not say 'noises'. My advice is to always avoid saying 'noises' in a scientific paper when talking about noise signal. When you are forced into talking about countable cases use phrases like 'noise types' or 'noise sources' or 'noise outputs'.  Saying 'noises' sounds very strange to the native English speaker in this scientific context.