Writing Tip
Nouns Used as Adjectives Should Be Singular
Difficulty Level: Basic
Recommendation: Make your noun-turned-adjectives singular.
Note: This tip can be applied to the use of many nouns, but these four nouns are continually misused as adjectives in technical reports: “communication,” “operation,” “application,” and “emission.”
There are many readers in this world, and those readers read lots of books, but even though “books” and “readers” are both plural, you wouldn’t describe these readers as “books readers.” When a noun like “book” is converted to an adjective for convenience and contraction (as in “book readers” instead of “readers of books”), you should generally use the singular form of that noun. The conversion from noun to adjective renders the word more abstract, just like an adjective. Note that in English, adjectives are neither singular nor plural (or, you can think of them as being singular and plural at the same time—whatever helps you to understand the abstract nature of adjectives). Although adjectives in certain other languages must agree with the noun in number, English speakers have no such burden.
I know. Some will say that the adjective “twenty” is plural, as in “twenty ohms,” but “twenty” in linguistic terms is singular. It’s meaning is plural, but its grammatical number is singular. If you use “twenty” as a noun, then you can make it plural, as in, “He tried to bribe me with a stack of twenties.”
When transforming nouns such as “communication” into adjectives, use the singular form, as in “communication system,” not “communications system.” Not only is such usage lawful, but it also, in this particular case, evades a tongue twister caused by the ending “s” in “communications” and the initial “s” in “system.” The two hissing s’s in the two words blunder into each other and cause a train wreck of sibilants (a sibilant is the hissing sound formed by the letters “s” and “z” and sometimes “c”). If there is more than one system, then the plural would be “communication systems.”
We don’t say “teethbrush” for a good reason. It violates the laws of English grammar. “Communication system” no more limits the number of communications in the system to one than toothbrush limits the number of teeth to one. (Although, in cliched isolated pockets in the South, “tooth” agrees in number.)
Some may argue that you can and perhaps should use the plural form of a noun-turned-adjective when the intent is plural and the noun is countable. In English, we can typically divide nouns into countable and non-countable nouns. “Cow” is a countable noun. We add “s” or “es” to the end to indicate plural-ness (although there are irregular ways to pluralize a noun, such as “man” > “men”). However, if the intent is plural, then the noun modified by the noun-turned-adjective should be pluralized. Non-countable nouns are those fuzzy conceptual abstract ones, such as “maturity” or “faith.” But the non-countable nouns, in many cases, already have adjectival forms, such as “mature” and “faithful.”
There are exceptions to this adjectivizing rule, of course. For example, “arm production” is the fabrication of prosthetic limbs, whereas “arms production” is the fabrication of weapons. And then there are words that are always treated as plural, such as clothes, so “clothes washer” is not a violation of grammar—it is an exception to a general rule. Another exception is when the plural form of a noun is part of an official title, such as “Communications Department.” If Acme Utilities has an official Communications Department, then you should respect its treatment of that noun-turned-adjective and use the utility’s official spelling.
Finally, a noun-turned-adjective can be misinterpreted by the reader as an ordinary noun instead of a modifier. Consider:
The sensors translate these emissions currents into meaningful data.
Here, the reader can misinterpret “emissions” as the object of “translate”: The sensors translate these emissions. Then, when the reader arrives at “currents,” he is lost.