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Magazine Hi! I've read the following sentence in a magazine. New, fuel-efficient aircraft are the key to reducing our overall costs 1)Why does it say aircraft instead of aircrafts? 2)Why does it say to reducing instead of to reduce? Thank you.

Corrections · 2

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http://grammar.about.com/od/irregularverbs/a/What-Is-A-Present-Participle-FAQ.htm
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1. If you look in a mono-lingual English dictionary you will see that the plural form of the singular aircraft is the same word. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/aircraft. No particular reason, it just is. 2. Because in this sense the word key is being used in sense 3 here: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/key. The word that follows key to must be a present participle. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/verb-tenses-adding-ed-and-ing

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