What is the difference between years and years

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Merriam-Webster's Visual Dictionaries. The new edition of the remarkable reference features 8, illustrations. Join Us. Learner's Dictionary on Twitter ». Learner's Dictionary on Facebook ». In the above two sentences, the first is completely wrong while the other is correct. There is a very In English grammar, when speaking about age, we only use the be form of verbs , that is, am, is and are, a nd consequently we avoid the verbs have and has.

This is a general rule that is applied when mentioning age in any English text. Wrong: I have ten years old. Correct: I am ten years old. Now that we know the correct verbs to be used, we should learn the guidelines for mentioning age in English speech or text.

When the age mentioned is one, we use year old , while for any age more than one, we use years old. In this case, the quantity of the age is the guide to whether to use year-old or years old. An adjective is a unit of grammar that attributes a noun. In the sentence, five-year-old is an adjective describing the noun boy, hence the preference of five year old instead of five years old. When the article a is present in a sentence, or rather, the age presents itself as a noun, year old is used and not years old.

An article, in grammar, comes before a noun and it automatically makes the noun singular, so the choice we make between year old and years old will also be singular, regardless of the quantity of the age.

This case is in reference to a sentence in plural form. If there is a noun present, the plural is only on the noun instead. Do you know what a hyphen is? Years is used for the plural of year. You need to place the apostrophe before the s when you are writing about a singular time one day, one month, one year and after the s when it is a plural time two days.

Three years, four years. Notice that we only need to do this when we include the noun that the time expression is about possessive. We only do this when we can replace the apostrophe with of. Read about when to use of in English grammar here. You can always use of if you feel like this makes things clearer:.