Is "news" singular or plural in English?

Sharing some news with friends? You might wonder if you should say "a news" or "some news" or even "many news." None of these sound quite right in English, and there's a reason for that.

Why "news" is always singular

The word "news," just like "information" or "knowledge," is what's called an uncountable word. You can have some news or lots of news, but you can't actually count it in pieces. This is why we always treat it as singular, as in "the news is good" not "the news are good."

For example:

"The news is on at 6:00 PM."

"This news is surprising."

"The latest news seems concerning."

What about multiple news items?

Since "news" is uncountable, we think of it as one big idea rather than separate things we can count. But what if you want to talk about specific updates instead of news as a whole?

In that case, we add an extra word to make it countable. That's why we say "a piece of news," "a news story," or "a news item" — not just "a news."

For instance:

"She shared three pieces of news with me."

"There are five news updates today."

"Several news stories broke this morning."

"We've received multiple news reports about strange flying objects in the newsroom!"

So no matter how much of it you get, the word "news" always stays singular. And if that clears things up, well — that's good news.

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