Possessives come up a lot in this column. That’s no surprise. They’re some of the most perplexing issues in English, as we saw in our recent column on Jess’s vs. Jess’ (P.S. both are acceptable). But ...

A natural follow-up to my last column about words that live in the plural is one about words that don’t get the regular “s” at the end. I should have thought of that myself, but, I will confess, a ...

A natural follow-up to my last column about words that live in the plural seemed to be one about words that don't get the regular "s" at the end. Certain words shun the final "s" to become plural.

Q: I drive a school bus, and this morning one of my seventh graders said to me, “Monte, did you see those deers on the side of the road?” I explained to him that certain words, like “deer,” are both ...

Usually English plurals are pretty easy. Just add s: one dog, two dogs. We know some plurals don't use s: children, deer. There are some nouns that we seem to use only in the plural: thanks, ...

See that mouse next to your computer? Pretend there are two of them. What would you call them: “mice” or “mouses”? In the first 15 years or so of its mainstream life, the computer mouse has had an ...