SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 9 September 2024, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 4 of 100

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 6 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

The following sentence has been divided into four segments. Identify the segment that contains an error. Mr. Abhilash and his family / have received / no informations / about the incident.

(a)about the incident.
(b)Mr. Abhilash and his family
(c)have received
(d)no informations

Answer

Why

Correct — D. The faulty segment is no informations.

Information is an uncountable noun in English. It takes no plural -s and no 'a' or 'an', however many separate items you have in mind.

The segment should read 'no information'. If you need to count, you count the containers, not the noun: two pieces of information → option (d).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
about the incident. — 'About the incident' is sound. Information about something is the standard collocation, and 'the incident' is correctly definite because the sentence treats it as already known.
(b)
Mr. Abhilash and his family — 'Mr. Abhilash and his family' is a compound subject joined by 'and', which is plural. There is nothing to fix in it.
(c)
have received — 'Have received' is present perfect, and have is the right form for that plural compound subject. Tense and agreement both hold.

Concept

English splits nouns into countable and uncountable, and the uncountables refuse three things: a plural -s, the article a/an, and the quantifier 'many'.

Information is one of them. So are advice, furniture, luggage, equipment, machinery, scenery, evidence and news.

Quantity for these comes from a partitive: a piece of information, an item of furniture, a bit of advice. SSC's error-spotting block tests this pattern more often than it tests any single tense.

Several of these nouns are countable in other languages, which is why the plural 'informations' looks acceptable to many candidates.

Key facts

Information has no plural form, so 'informations' is always wrong.
The countable version is 'a piece of information'.
Advice, furniture, luggage, equipment, machinery and scenery behave the same way.
News ends in -s but is uncountable and takes a singular verb.

Study next

The uncountable-noun list SSC recycles across shiftsQuantifiers that fit uncountables: much, little, a great deal ofNouns that are countable in one sense and uncountable in another, such as paper and work

Common traps

Suspecting the long subject 'Mr. Abhilash and his family' of a number error when 'and' already makes it plural
Treating 'have received no informations' as a tense fault rather than a noun fault

The sentence is cut into four labelled segments and exactly one carries the fault, so read each segment as a unit rather than the sentence as a whole.

Also asked 9 Sep 2024, 9:00, English Q.11, where the faulty segment is an adjective used where an adverb is needed.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.