I have a sentence like:
Morphological and statistical features of individual heartbeats are
used to…
I'm not sure whether it's correct or I should use individual heartbeat
.
I googled it and it seems individual
comes with both singular and plural nouns.
Best Answer
Individual is indeed a noun and an adjective. When used as a noun, it refers to a person, or someone. For example:
To give a couple of examples of the use of the adjective, using heartbeat in its singular and plural:
Singular
Or
Note: when singular, individual would be preceded by each, every, one, an, or the.
Plural
Summary
So, in short, use individual heartbeat if you are talking about one particular heartbeat, or individual heartbeats when referring to the separate heartbeats as an ensemble.
In the example that you provide,
you are referring to the features of a collection (plural) of heartbeats (even though, you are considering each and every individual heartbeat), and so you are correct in using individual heartbeats