My Grammar and I (Or Should That Be 'Me'?): Old-School Ways to Sharpen Your English

The numbers game
Another  way  of  categorizing  nouns  is  to  divide  them  into  countable  and  mass
(or non-countable ) nouns.
Countable nouns are (reasonably enough) used to name something that can be
counted,  such  as  one  plate,  two  eggs,  three  sausages.  It’s  countable  if  you  can
ask how many are  there?  or  state  there  are  a  number  of  men/chairs/staplers  –
because you can easily count the specific number of items.
†17
A  mass  or  non-countable  noun  refers  to  something  that  cannot  reasonably  be

---

counted and therefore has no plural, such as air , art, milk  ,  money  ,  stupidity  ,
sand  and  wisdom.  Quantities  of  non-countable  nouns  are  described  as  an
amount of hair/sand/rubbish , either because they refer to an unspecified amount
of  stuff  or  because  there  are  too  many  individual  bits  (e.g.  of  hair  or  sand)  to
number.  We  can’t  ask  how  many?  with  non-countable  nouns  (how  many  milk,
how many traffic); it’s simply how much?