A few days ago I saw the following phrase from a book for kids:
... caught four fish.
I grinned at the low quality of the book: How can such an easy-to-spot typo allowed? "Four Fishes" not "Four Fish", please! But as I continued to read further, the same phrase appeared again in another page:
... she has four fish.
What?! Two similar typos? Hmm... I grinned no more and thought that I might be wrong!
Yes, I was wrong! I did some research and just learned the proper way to use "fish" and "fishes":
- Only one fish: use Fish;
- A quantity of fish from the same kind (i.e., many from a single species): use Fish, not Fishes! (This is the 'trap' I didn't know!)
- A quantity of fish with variety (i.e., many from more than one species): use Fishes.
Did you know about this?
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