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I recently joined a company as a trainee and we have to skype our priorities or task that we are going to do on that day.

For example, people write priorities like this:

1. HTML/CSS training - [0.5 hours].

2. PHP training - [9 hours].

Now I do know about quasi possessive but this doesn't sound like a quasi possessive. I want to know whether it should be 9 hour or 9 hours? Maybe it might be 9 hours because it's more than 1 but writing 0.5 hours seems a bit confusing. Please let me know what's the correct usage. Thank you.

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  • It's plural in all cases except for 1 hour. – Jim Aug 26 '14 at 4:54
  • The reason 0.5 hours seems odd is because you're used to say "half an hour" (or similar) - but a half is not a single :) – Allan S. Hansen Aug 26 '14 at 5:55
  • Whether you use hour or hours would seem of minor consideration compared to your use of gonna and wanna. Don't you get marked down professionally for doing that? – WS2 Aug 26 '14 at 5:56
  • If "0.5 hours" seems confusing, that only means you're a non-native speaker who hasn't quite got used to the way English runs things. "0.5 hours" is perfectly fine English; "0.5 hour" would be ungrammatical nonsense. See the linked question for an excellent in-depth answer. Meanwhile Jim right here provides a nice executive summary: one is singular. Everything else is not singular. Simple as that. – RegDwigнt♦ Aug 26 '14 at 10:00
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Usually a decimal portion of an hour is followed by "hours". Like 2.5 hours, 1.5 hours, 0.5 hours etc. However normally we say half an hour or thirty minutes not 0.5 hrs.

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