"The stars shore on the sky....." - I think you meant shone, the past tense of shine, rather than shore. Also, the example sentence seems to be grammatically incorrect. Let's consider a new example sentence: "The stars shine in the sky..." Singular: The star shines in the sky... Plural: The stars shine in the sky... As you can see, the verb "to shine" conjugates differently depending on the noun. Thus, you can always determine if a noun is singular or plural by investigating the conjugation of the verb. Here is a list of conjugations for "shine": I shine. You (s.) shine. He/she/it shines. We shine. You (pl.) shine. They shine. Hopefully this answers your question. If not, leave a comment and I will respond ASAP. They shine.