Friday, July 10, 2009

Pluralizing Compound Nouns

This is something very common and most of us make this mistake very often even without knowing that it is a mistake.

As per the English Grammar, “Compound nouns are nouns that are composed of two or more words, connected by hyphens or stems, and are considered one noun.”

Example: sister-in-law, father-in-law

Clearly, both these compound nouns refer to only one person. How do we refer to more than one? I mean the plural form…

When creating a plural compound noun, an "s" is added to the main noun only.

That is, sisterS-in-law, fatherS-in-law and NOT sister-in-laws or father-in-laws

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