In Numbers^x, Countable nouns^x, Uncountable nouns^x

There are a great many chemical compounds called salts, but I doubt you would want very many of them on your food. And I doubt that people would want to ask for that uncountable "table salt" specifically by its chemical name NaCl whenever they wanted some. _____ All substances...

Crime in this context is not uncountable, but generic. I see your choices as follows: A substantial amount of the nation's crime is committed A substantial number of the nation's cri mes are committed

These are often called "uncountable nouns" (or "mass nouns"). For example, you can count apples -- one apple, two apples, three apples -- but you can't count "informations". There are lots and lots of them in English. Some examples are at...

Hi, Why is it good to use the word 'amount' instead of "number" here? A substantial amount of the nation's crime is committed by a small number of bad actors -- I think you can count the number of crime occurances. Would you say since the word 'crime' is...

Thanks Kooyeen. I know it is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG to use "software" as a countable noun. We can certainly find a lot of reasons why "software" should be uncountable. However, I just hate I have to say "a piece of software" or a "software package" every time...

To the extent that you can hold a heart in your hand, it differs from the mind and the soul (assuming that mind does not equal brain). So you wish to talk about "heart" in the abstract. The soul seems to be an intangible concept by definition. The mind means different things to...

are /doing I hope this helps. I think Maths are used only in plural.

I agree that people should sometimes do things they do not enjoy doing because they are the basis of life. Doing things we do not enjoy at the time may turn out to be fun later. Moreover, those things can be requirements that we have to meet in life. No one like to do the...

Hi Explor1ing, I'm confused too. Which of the two nouns needs to be plural? Both? The meaning of the sentence is unclear. How do you make a category? Are you cataloguing books? Setting up a new system? If you wanted to say, "How many book categories are there?" then "book" is acting like...

Thank you, Avangi. So I think what you seem to alluding to me is that native speakers like you (I am sure you are one of them) seem to divide a noun into categories based on practical usage -- the usage that serves a practical purpose in an environment where English is spoken naturally --...