singular-vs-pluralword-choice
In this sentence, the difference is clear, I think:
He put on his jacket and ventured into the street(s).
street: one specific street.
streets: the streets of that city/town.
In the following sentence, however, I'm not very sure. Both options seems correct to me:
Let's wait until there are fewer people on the street(s).
Is there any difference? What option is more appropiate?
Consider this answer more of a discussion than a direct answer to your question. The comments given above are interesting, but first of all let me summarize and then explain .
1) It is not a mistake to hyphenate "Comfortable-to-use" in the way you did, because it is a compound adjective.
2) Your grammar is right, but it does not convey the right meaning, because of poor choice of words and compound adjectives in your case.
Now for the explanation.
Point 1 :
It is not a mistake to hyphenate "Comfortable-to-use" - It is a compound adjective, so hyphenating it is correct. Consider other compound adjectives like state-of-the-art, mouth-watering, world-famous, these are widely used compound adjectives and most of the time they are not hyphenated even though they should be (here is an example). Consider the word "non-violent", you might have seen it being used as "nonviolent", yes it needs a hyphen between the word and the prefix but it is not wrong when the hyphen is ignored and the prefix just attached to the word, so naturally when you are exposed to a lot of words that originally had to be hyphenated but were not, using multiple hyphens as part of a compound adjective can feel weird and wrong, so I can understand why you were unsure about hyphenating "Comfortable-to-use". There is a lot of grammar behind it and I don't want to delve deeper. Usage of hyphen and apostrophe often confuses a lot of people and often misused as well, but in your case you were right to hyphenate "Comfortable-to-use".I always have 2 favorite examples to quote when I try to explain hyphenation
Examples : Man-eating(compound adjective)
1) Man-eating Crocodile vs Man eating Crocodile
2) Man eating Chicken vs Man-eating Chicken
The examples are a bit funny but shows you the impact of hyphenation.
Point 2:
Your grammar is right, but it does not convey the right meaning, because of poor choice of words and compound adjectives in your case. I say your grammar is right, because the way you constructed the sentence is correct, but still your sentence does not convey the right meaning because of poor choice of words. I am a software developer as well (C#, WPF) so I can understand what you are trying to convey, but the sentence falls short because of the use of "Comfortable-to-use". I agree with some of the comments to your question where they advise you to choose a single word such as convenient, or use compound adjectives like easy-to-use, I would say those are valid suggestions, not because "Comfortable-to-use" is not idiomatic, but because it does not fit the context.
As a software developer I always give top priority to reliability and ease-of-use of the software and I will make sure that the customers understand that as well. That is where your sentence falls short(by the way, falls short is an idiom not a compound adjective).
Comfortable vs Easy
Comfort is a physical experience, but ease is a quality. for example, lets say you are a English native but bilingual and you are equally good in English and French, and you are given a choice of writing a 10,000 word essay in either English or French, which option do you think will feel comfortable? It is not easy to write up a 10,000 word essay be it in English or French, but at-least writing it in English will make you feel more comfortable than writing it in French.
So when you talk about ease vs comfort in terms of software
Easy-to-use : Hey my software does not require much learning and/or practice to use it. It is intuitive and requires very less effort on the customers part to use it.
Comfortable-to-use : Hey my software can be easy or hard to use but it does not have any flashing images or a florescent green background, it is very comfortable to use but I cant tell you if it is easy or tough.
So replacing "Comfortable-to-use" with "Easy-to-use" will make more sense.
On a side note about idioms, idioms are basically group of words that cannot be interpreted literally or has a different meaning when it becomes a part of a sentence.
Examples:
Rub someone the wrong way - meaning to annoy or bother ,Jump the gun - would mean to be doing something early,Pay the piper - means you need to face the consequences of your actions, It's raining cats and dogs - It is raining heavily.
Easy-to-use literally means "easy to use", so "Comfortable-to-use" is just as much idiomatic as "easy-to-use" is, hence the reason it is idiomatic or not does not make "Comfortable-to-use" weird.
You could say either "life" or "lives," but I take them to have different meanings.
The ranch workers were destined to live a horrible life, for they were haunted by loneliness.
In this sentence, I would assume that the loneliness the ranch workers were haunted by is a result of their being ranch workers. Because they are all doing the same thing and lonely for the same reason, they have a horrible life and not lives because there is little separating the individual ranch workers. Metaphorically, they are all living the same life.
The ranch workers were destined to live horrible lives, for they were haunted by loneliness.
I would interpret this to mean that each of the ranch workers was lonely, but that they were not necessarily lonely for the same reason (i.e. because they are ranch workers). Unlike in the above sentence, they are not (metaphorically) living the same life.
I didn't find it particularly easy to articulate that, so if it could be clearer please let me know.
I think context plays a large part in interpreting these sorts of sentences, and even then some sentences may sound nonsensical.
All the people in the audience raised their hands.
We all know that hand-raising usually involves raising only one hand, and we can safely assume that everyone in the audience has at least one hand, so it's clear to the reader that the audience members are individually raising a hand.
In other situations, it may be best to rewrite the sentence. I'm shamelessly stealing this example from EL&U:
Corporations may not have a conscience, but they do have PR departments.
Corporations may not have consciences, but they do have PR departments.
Corporations may not have a conscience, but they do have a PR department.
Which of these is correct? Definitely not the third one (which states that all corporations have a single lack of conscience and a single PR department), and while the the second one is more favourable than the first, these sentences could be rewritten into an unambiguous form:
A corporation may not have a conscience, but it does have a PR department.
Here we run into some other difficulty. Your sentence isn't as simple as this one, mostly because you're using the definite article. You could say:
The ranch workers were each destined to live a horrible life, for they were haunted by loneliness.
By using each, the sentence now refers to the ranch workers individually and separately, so using the singular is unambiguous.
Best Answer
There is a subtle difference in your two examples and I don't think they mean quite the same thing. Street can be used literally to refer to a paved road. Street can also be used to refer to particular things that that are outdoors or occur outdoors. Here in the U.S. homeless people live on/in the street or streets. You may say either. They both mean out of doors or unsheltered.
If I say He puts on his leather jacket and ventures into the street(s), I would generally be saying ...and ventures outdoors. This is different than saying He went into the street and starting clearing downed trees from last night's storm, which is a literal reference to a paved road.
When referring to literal, paved roads you will want to pay attention to the plural form. The street is covered in oil is different from The streets are covered in oil. When referring to outdoors you can use either street or streets. In that instance they mean the same.