Categories of Nouns
Nouns can be classified further as count nouns, which name anything that can be counted (four books, two continents, a few dishes, a dozen buildings); mass nouns (or non-count nouns), which name something that can't be counted (water, air, energy, blood); and collective nouns, which can take a singular form but are composed of more than one individual person or items (jury, team, class, committee, herd). We should note that some words can be either a count noun or a non-count noun depending on how they're being used in a sentence:He got into trouble. (non-count) He had many troubles. (countable) Experience (non-count) is the best teacher. We had many exciting experiences (countable) in college. Whether these words are count or non-count will determine whether they can be used with articles and determiners or not. (We would not write \"He got into the troubles,\" but we could write about \"The troubles of Ireland.\"
Some texts will include the category of abstract nouns, by which we mean the kind of word that is not tangible, such as warmth, justice, grief, and peace. Abstract nouns are sometimes troublesome for non-native writers because they can appear with determiners or without: \"Peace settled over the countryside.\" \"The skirmish disrupted the peace that had settled over the countryside.\" See the section on Plurals for additional help with collective nouns, words that can be singular or plural, depending on context.
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