Alright, I am going to make a point of this one last time. Then I am going to bury my revered high school Latin textbook in the backyard, in the sacred ground deep beneath my cat’s ashes. DATA IS PLURAL!
And that sentence is the only way to say correctly “Data is”!
My former colleagues in the press seem to have long ago given up on the correct usage of “data.” Even television doctors commenting on the pandemic
data, people trained in a science that has long drawn heavily on Latin words and roots, routinely mess up the use of “data.” You know what the singular word for “data” is? It is datum which, I agree, does not roll easily off the tongue. But we don’t need a single datum. We need an “are.”
So goodbye to “Data are . . .” RIP with the language of the ancients–and my beloved cat. Continue reading “Language Habits II (A Series of Occasional Rants)”
