Welcome to
Gruesome Grammar Tuesday—or as I like to call it Gruesday!
As a writer and an
editor, grammar plays a huge (and sometimes hated) role in my life. You never
know just how important it is until you find yourself stuck in the middle of a
sentence, wondering if what you’ve already written makes sense at all. Well
NEVER FEAR Gruesday is here! Every week I’m going to do a new post reviewing a
different grammar rule, to help myself and you as well.
For my first
Gruesday post I am going to discuss a question that an author asked me the
other day. I never considered it before now and it ended up
being a really great inquiry.
The
difference between content
and contents.
If I hadn’t
been asked this question, there’s a good chance that I might have never
considered it. What is the difference between the two? (Besides the obvious one, lol)
In my search
to answer this question I went to Dictionary.com to see the difference in
definitions of the two words. When looking up content the first thing (even before any definition) was this:
con·tent
1 [kon-tent] Show IPA
noun
1.
Usually, contents.
I almost thought this was reason enough to stop looking. The words seem
interchangeable and after more searching, I found that indeed, in some cases
they are, BUT not always.
As my search online continued I found this great explanation of the two.
Contents usually refers to specific, individual things contained in a whole.
Whereas content usually refers to a more general concept. All of the things within something are seen as one whole thing.
Example: Books often have a "table of contents". This is a listing of all the specific, individual chapters contained in the book.
Your grammar book probably has a table of contents which lists the specific chapters/units and the specific grammar points covered in each.
But you might say the content of your grammar book is grammar (a more general concept).
This explanation makes it sound simple, right? Contents refers specific things and content is a more vague description. And this is correct in every situation, right? Wrong.
This is grammar so there is never a simple or one sided conclusion to anything. (Never forget that!)
As my search online continued I found this great explanation of the two.
Contents usually refers to specific, individual things contained in a whole.
Whereas content usually refers to a more general concept. All of the things within something are seen as one whole thing.
Example: Books often have a "table of contents". This is a listing of all the specific, individual chapters contained in the book.
Your grammar book probably has a table of contents which lists the specific chapters/units and the specific grammar points covered in each.
But you might say the content of your grammar book is grammar (a more general concept).
This explanation makes it sound simple, right? Contents refers specific things and content is a more vague description. And this is correct in every situation, right? Wrong.
This is grammar so there is never a simple or one sided conclusion to anything. (Never forget that!)
The usage of
the word depends on a lot of things. For example—contents is the plural form of content so if
you were to say something like:
The content(s) is(are) sewing materials.
Which would
it be? Well, if we refer to our rule farther up it should be content because it is not talking about the
specific articles within the container, right? Wrong again. Because more than one item is being referred to
(plural) and all items are countable within the container which means that
would use the plural form of the noun and the correct sentence would be:
The contents are sewing materials.
Confused
yet? Haha, I’m not trying to be confusing. At the end of the day it is up to
the writer’s discretion to look at the sentence, evaluate what you know and go
with what sounds best. That’s just how grammar works. With using it comes great
choices and decisions to be made. Unfortunately being a writer means you will
make wrong decisions all the time, even
when you know your rules, haha.
I hope this
explanation was useful.
May your future writing be full of
grammatically correct content!
Happy Gruesday!
Sources:
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