or bits to indicate exact quantities.
She took a great deal of luggage on her trip, (singular; uncountable)
She took ten pieces of luggage on her trip.
Luggage has no plural form; the countable noun piece is used to indicate the number of items.
Note that even the uncountable nouns that end in -s in the list in item D such as diabetes and physics) are singular and uncountable.
Some countable nouns can be considered as countable or uncountable, depending on the context. Used as an uncountable noun, they refer to the concept in general; used as a countable noun, they refer to a particular one. Uncountable:
Chocolate is fattening. (All chocolate: generalization about a mass noun.)
Countable: He ate a chocolate. (One piece, one serving in a box of chocolates.) He ate four more chocolates.
Uncountable: Life is precious. (Generalization: life as a concept.)
Countable: She leads a busy life. (Specifically the type of life she leads is a busy one. It could be a boring life, a dangerous life, and so on.)
People say that a cat has nine lives.
Task 3. In the context of each of the following sentences, adapted from Panati’s Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things, indicate in the spaces after the nouns whether they are countable (C) or uncountable (U).
Levi Strauss came to California in the 1850s dining the Gold Rush to make clothes for the miners (-). He knew that they would wear out their clothes quickly, so he made them out of canvas (-), which was used at the time to make tents (-). Later he replaced the canvas with denim – a softer fabric (-) originating from the city of Nimes in (-) France. In Europe this fabric was known as “serge de Nimes" and because of the way (-) it was pronounced, it came to be known as denim in (-) America. Strauss began to dye the miners' pants blue so that stains would not show, and this color increased their popularity (-). To achieve a snug fit cowboys (-) would soak them in water (-), then put them on and lie in the sun to shrink the material (-) as it dried.
(Grammar Troublespots: 81)
E. Quantity words
Some quantity words can he used only with uncountable nouns, with countable singular nouns, or with countable plural nouns. Others can be used with both uncountable nouns and countable plural nouns. Refer to the following chart for correct usage.