Grammar Girl here. I'm Injohn Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language.

Today we're going to talk about the different ways we make words that end in why plural,

and then we'll talk about some of Bill LeBove's famous linguistic studies.

A member of our Facebook Grammar Girl group asked if we know why the

plurals of some words that end with the letter Y take an S, whereas others take an I-E-S. Well,

Rich, we have an answer for you. Fortunately, in English, plurals do have some consistent rules.

For example, most plurals are formed by simply adding S or E S to the end of a word.

If a noun ends with a sound that merges gracefully with the S sound, you add an S.

For example, dog becomes dogs and cat becomes cats.

If a noun ends with a sound that doesn't slide smoothly into an S sound, you add

E-S. This happens with a lot of words that end in a sibilant sound like S-H, C-H, X, Z, and S. For example,

church becomes churches, buzz becomes buzzes, and box becomes boxes, all with an ES on the end.

A similar pattern happens with words that end in Y. If the Y comes right after a consonant or the letters Q-U, we change the Y to I-E-S.

For example, lady becomes ladies, L-A-D-I-E-S.

Baby becomes babies, B-A-B-A-B-I-E-S.

Soliloquy becomes soliloquies, with an I-E-S at the end.

In contrast, if the Y comes right after a vowel, we just add an S to the word to make it

plural. So journey becomes journeys, J-O-U-R-N-E-Y-S. Play becomes plays, P-L-A-Y-S. And Cowboy

becomes Cowboys, with just an S in the end.

An easy way to remember this is to think of that vowel before the Y.

If you were to change the Y to an I-E-S, you'd be piling two more vowels at the end of the word.

Think of how plays would look if it was spelled PLA-I-E-S.

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