Plurals

Style basics

Add an ‘s’ or ‘es’ to pluralise most words

documents

taxes

When plural, most words take an ‘s’ or ‘es’.

taxis

potatoes

But for words ending with a consonant and a ‘y’, replace the ‘y’ with ‘ies’.

quantities

And watch out for irregular plurals that don’t need an ‘s’ at all.

men, women and children

There are many irregular plural forms. If you’re unsure what to use, check the Macquarie Dictionary.

Punctuation

Don’t use apostrophes in plural words, acronyms or initialisms

photos

IOUs

1820s

The most common error in forming plurals is adding an apostrophe before the letter 's'. This is often because a plural form can look like a contraction with letters missing.

Don’t be tempted to add an apostrophe to a plural word, as it’s simply not needed. Watch out in particular for the following cases:

Plural	Examples
Regular nouns ending in a vowel	taxis videos
Shortened forms	FAQs MOUs
Decades	1990s 2000s

Measurements

Treat units differently depending on their form

15 m

15 metres

15 metre cord

You don’t need to use an ‘s’ in the short forms of units of measurement, because they act as symbols for both the singular and plural forms.

52 m

6 kg

However, where you spell out a measurement in full, add the plural ‘s’ at the end of the word.

The new record was 52 metres.

Six kilograms of the drug were found.

When you have a measurement as a compound adjective, keep the unit in the singular. Hyphenate the compound only if it might otherwise be unclear.

a 52 metre record

3-metre planks

Compound words

Make only the main noun plural

attorneys-general

brothers-in-law

The plural forms of compound words sometimes sound odd.

This is because the second word in a compound is usually the main noun, and we’re used to adding the plural ‘s’ at the end of that word.

But in some noun compounds , the 'head word' is the first not the second word, so it takes the plural letter 's'.

We met with other auditors-general from around the country.

Note that ‘auditors-general’ is also in lower case here because it is plural and does not refer to 1 person or title.