Indians often face great difficulty when using the correct tenses. Unlike most of the Indian languages, English tends to have a much more confusing connection between words in their plural forms and the same words in their singular forms.

So, here is a list of five most common mistakes made by Indians in using the singular and plural forms.

CHILDREN/CHILDChild is the singular form, children is the plural form. ‘ Let us talk to the childrens’ is wrong. The correct sentence should be: ‘Let us talk to the children.

In a sentence like: ‘Children’s park is to the left side of the road,’ note that there is an apostrophe after the word ‘children’ to show that the park should be used by children.

INFORMATIONS/INFORMATION

Information is always used as a plural. There is no such word as ‘informations’.

The information given in the book is incorrect.

MEDIAS/MEDIA

The word ‘media’ is used as a plural. The singular form of the word is ‘medium’.

The media brought out the new scandal.

PEOPLES

The sentences ‘There are many peoples in the room’ is wrong.

The correct way to say is ‘There are manypeople in this room’ You can use an apostrophe(‘) as in ‘people’s’ in

sentences like: This government was formed by people’s vote.

But then, the meaning changes to ‘of the people’.

DATA

‘We need all the datas that we have collected’ is incorrect.

The correct sentence should be ‘We need all the data that we have collected.’

Data is a plural word, the singular of it is ‘datum’ which is rarely used.