Grammar Girl here. I'm in Jan Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff. Today, we're going to talk about whether you are pantless or pantsless in your Zoom calls and about the origin of Beetlejuice.

Some weird English nouns are only plural, and they're called plural tantum, which fittingly is

Latin for plural only. Its plural is pluralia tantum. They're also called binary nouns. According to the Oxford Dictionary of

English grammar, these unique nouns typically, but not always, end with the letter S. And the items

themselves commonly consist of two parts, like pants, scissors, glasses, leggings, pliers, jeans, and so forth.

Although clothes and folk, each a true pluralitantum, frequently represent more than two things.

But even though these plurale tantum are singular count nouns, the rule is that they always take a plural

verb. Wild, right? Well, even Richard Lederer in his book Crazy English, asks, quote,

doesn't it seem just a little loopy that we can make amends but never just one amend?

That no matter how carefully we comb through the annals of history, we can make amends, but never just one amend, that no matter how carefully we comb through

the annals of history, we can never discover just one annal, that we can never be in a doldrum,

get a jitter, a willy, a jim-jam, or a heby-jee-be, unquote. While the word pants seems

easy enough to define, how it's treated grammatically,

especially considering how it's evolved, can raise pesky issues for even the most accomplished

writer, editor, or reader. Let's look at two examples of these quirky nouns, pants and scissors.

ArtVarck's pants are brand new.

We don't say Ardvarx pants is brand new because pants takes a plural verb, and it just sounds awkward.

Squiggly's scissors are in his backpack.

We wouldn't say Squiggly's scissors is in his backpack, because again, it's

incorrect and sounds dreadful. Remember, a plural tantum never takes a singular verb. But if you rely on

your intuition based on how the sentence sounds, you'll almost certainly get it right every time.

There are trickier situations we'll get to in a minute,

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