100 Mistakes #23 - This is the news

The word news is an uncountable noun.

That means that you cannot have one, two, three, four, seventeen, ninety-three or two-hundred-and-sixty-eight "news".

I saw a new about it this morning.

No you didn't, you saw a report or you read an article.

new is an adjective but it is not a noun

news is a noun but it is not plural

You can watch or read the news - the latest information about local or world events - but you can't watch a new or read a new.

So why the hell does it have an 's'?

Well, the 's' is there because it has an 's' in French. (It's probably easiest to blame the French for everything.)

Also, news is usually about more than one thing: "the news" is made up of individual news stories, news items or news reports.

We often use "the news" to refer to the news programme itself, so it's quite natural to say: yes, I saw it on the news.

Now watch Peter O'Hanraha-hanrahan make a complete mess of the news.
(This bit is for advanced students really.)

Peter, you've lost the news!