Gramer girl here, this week I have a quick and dirty tip about the plural of the word fish,

a piece about region names, and finally a tidbit about a quirky and tricky writing form

called a crab cannon.

And now is the plural of fish, fish, or fishes?

Well, it depends.

Fish is the most common plural form of the word fish, as in, squiggly brought home fish

for the aquarium.

And there are some instances in which people use fishes instead.

Scientists, who study fish, for example, often refer to different species as fishes.

A quick Google book search returns many scientific tomes talking about the different kinds of fishes

that researchers have found in various regions, such as 30 kinds of fishes off the coast of

California and 149 kinds of fishes in Minnesota.

In the Bible, Jesus feeds thousands of men with loaves and fishes.

The movie The Godfather popularized the saying that someone sleeps with the fishes to describe

mob killings in which a corpse is dumped in the water.

And finally, there are a few different sayings that begin with if wishes were fishes.

The most common one I've seen is if wishes were fishes we'd all cast nets into the sea.

The quick and dirty tip is that the plural of fish is fish.

Unless you're writing about different species of fish, or a mobster, or quoting the Bible

or are just trying to make a rhyme.

Next, we're going to talk about the difference between England, Britain, and the UK.

I know all European listeners think it's ridiculous that Americans don't know the difference

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