# Quick Tip: Rails Singularization of -ess

> How to handle singularization of words like 'business' and 'address' through custom inflection rules in Ruby on Rails.

- Author: Curtis Miller
- Published: 2009-09-29
- Categories: rails, how-to
- Canonical URL: https://millarian.com/posts/quick-tip-rails-singularization-of-ess/

Have you ever created a Ruby on Rails application dealing with businesses or addresses? I'd be hard pressed to find someone who hasn't.

Strangely, though, Rails does not have an inflection that deals with the singularization of these words correctly. From the command line, try singularizing the word "business":

[Code sample on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/194495)

While this seems like a contrived situation, it's actually not as hard to hit as you'd think (e.g., common code that needs to singularize the incoming argument). I saw this while using Acl9, a [role-based authorization system for Rails](http://github.com/be9/acl9)...

**Here's a quick fix that you can add to your config/initializers/inflections.rb:**

[Code sample on GitHub Gist](https://gist.github.com/194493)

You can read more about how this won't be fixed in this [ticket](https://rails.lighthouseapp.com/projects/8994/tickets/2399-incorrect-inflectors-for-business-or-ness).