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Some illustrative examples of English mass nouns:
Some nouns can have both mass noun and count noun meanings. For example, "laundry" as a mass noun is the stuff you put in the washing machine, i.e. dirty clothes. A "laundry" as a count noun is an establishment which washes clothes, also known as a laundromat or laundrette. The difference in meaning can be interpreted from whether the item is counted:
This difference is subtle when phrased in the negative:
Another marker of difference between mass and count nouns is "less" and "fewer":
Many English speakers incorrectly use "less" for both types; in the 1990s several British supermarkets were criticised for their signs above checkouts reading "10 items or less". The correct form is "10 items or fewer": "items" is a count noun, and a mass noun cannot be given a number anyway. In American English though, "less" is considered as acceptable as "fewer" to describe count nouns and is used more commonly.
A mass noun can be preceded by a count noun, as in "ten pieces of furniture" or "a gallon of water".
The word " data" is often used as a mass noun, especially by people who work with computers. In formal writing it retains its original grammatical role as the plural of "datum".
There is a certain tendency in colloquial American English to treat some mass nouns as countable, e.g. "softwares" for "software", "behaviors" for "behavior", "accommodations" for "accommodation". One could argue that these countable forms have slightly different meanings than their mass forms.
Some kinds of nouns have subtle rules. For example count forms are used for fish not intended for food while mass nouns are used for fish one would eat.
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