Uncountable Nouns

The noun can be broadly classified as “Countable” or “Uncountable”. The thumb rule to check whether a noun is countable or not is that countable nouns can be counted individually where as uncountable noun can not. This is the reason that we donot have plural forms of uncountable nouns. An important thing to remember that one should never use the article ‘a” or “an” before uncountable nouns.

Broadly speaking there are 5 categories of uncountable nouns

1)      Food- e.g. meat ,butter

2)      Liquids -e.g. Tea

3)      Materials- e.g. paper ,iron

4)      Abstract nouns e.g. advice ,music

5)      Powders e.g. flour

Some uncountable nouns can  be used as countable by adding phrase.

piece of baggage

a loaf of bread

a bar of butter

a slice of cheese

a piece of furniture

a piece of information

a glass of water