Noun followed by noun, plural issue

Question

Hello,I'm quite confused when I need to write 2 words which both are nouns and it should be plural form. eg. I have made all of the books' category. Is it correct? or book categories? or book's categories?Please enlighten me, thanks

Avangi · Accepted Answer

Hi Explor1ing,

I'm confused too. Which of the two nouns needs to be plural? Both? The meaning of the sentence is unclear. How do you make a category? Are you cataloguing books? Setting up a new system?

If you wanted to say, "How many book categories are there?" then "book" is acting like an adjective modifying "categories" (what kind of categories) and in English adjectives don't need to agree with their nouns in number.

If you wanted to say, "How many categories of books can you name?" then "books" is a noun and would usually be plural. If you said, "How many types of food can you name?" food would probably be singular, I guess because it can be a countable or an uncountable noun.

Are you trying to get possession into the picture? The book's dust jacket is missing. (singular book) All the books' dust jackets are missing. (plural books, plural jackets)

I believe the apostrophe is used in making a plural only when the noun is a proper noun: She has two Jaguar's in the garage.

I believe possession for proper nouns ending in "s" is rendered by an apostrophe plus another optional "s." I just listened to Saint-Saens'(s) organ concerto.

I hope some of this helped answer your question. - A.

Explor1ng · Answer

Thanks for detailed explanation.
Sometimes I'm confused to differentiate which one needs to be in plural form, please don't laugh at me

maybe it's because my main language has no distinction between plural and singular form. In my previous example I want to say that I have labeled the categories of some books in the library, so there are some books (plural) and because each book has its own category, so the category should be plural too (?), and the category belongs to a book, so the correct one in my case is books' categories ? what if I say books' category, from english language sense is there any different in the meaning?

Thanks.

Avangi · Answer

Hi Exploring,

Your question is perfectly clear. [May I please reserve the right to laugh occasionally? At my age it's one of the few pleasures remaining.]

Books' categories is absolutely correct, and as you have noted, books' is not only plural but possessive as well. If you have time, please do me the favor of using the expression in a complete sentence which reveals more of the context. Perhaps there's a way to phrase it which would roll more pleasingly off the tongue.

Concerning your last question, you may say: "Each book's category is different." "These books' categories are all different." "All these books' category is detective stories." So yes, to use the singular category gives the phrase a different meaning, as you suspected. You may note the last example is ugly, and we'd find a better way to say it.

Best regards, - A.

Noun followed by noun, plural issue

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