say "[the noun] is blablabla."This works great for singular nouns, but fails for plurals since “is” should then be “are”. I know that you can refer to the article of an object in a text substitution, so I was wondering if there is something similar for its “isness”? I can’t find anything in the documentation.
I remember seeing [is-are] somewhere, maybe in Short’s “Plurality” extension? I’m a bit behind the times, but I’m sure the new adaptive text covers that somehow.
Assuming you’re using the latest release, try [are] (chapter 14.3 in the docs.)
I tried
"[the noun] [are] blablabla."
This compiles, but it still prints “is”…
To elaborate: verbs are usually given in the third plural form in Inform ([walk] rather than [walks]), to match with [these] and such. It also looks the same as many other English forms so you can say [We] [walk] and [They] [might walk] and such.
It’ll print “is” for a singular noun and “are” for a plural. Whether a noun acts singular or plural is determined by how you defined it: “an apple is a thing” vs “some socks are a thing”. You can also override this with the “plural-named” property (“the socks are plural-named”).
Does Inform know that the object in question is supposed to be plural? Just ending it with an “s” isn’t enough, because English is terrible. As a last resort, explicitly make the object in question plural-named.
Or post a more complete (but small) game exhibiting the erroneous behavior, and someone will be able to help you out.
The noun wasn’t correctly defined as plural. Everything works now 
.