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.

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It seems that I have never heard a professional athlete, a coach, or a sportscaster who knows from adverbs.  Have you noticed their utter absence from jock-speech?  “He played fantastic out there tonight!”  “She learned her role quick after joining the team.”  “Not to put too fine a point on it, but the team did not play tremendous today.”  Yeah, well, not to put too fine a point on it, but what have you people got against the letters “ly”?  Will journalists be the next to pick up this “lie”?  Who started this perverse movement?  Will adverbs end up in the grave with my cat and “data are”?  Tell me it ain’t so, Oxford.

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Why is saying ‘You’re welcome’ such a problem?  I didn’t say “Am I troubling you?”  I said “Thank you.”  Why is the standard reply to “thank you” now “No problem.”  So if you found simply being kind or just doing your job to be a problem, you would not have helped me?  Thanks for the heads up!  Now I have to constantly worry over whether I am being a problem to you?  No, thank you.

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You know what’s no problem?  Space, that’s what.  Ignore the crowded cities, inadequate housing, the polluted atmosphere.  We can’t get too much of space!  Of course there is plenty of space for billionaire astronauts!  But that is not what I am talking about.  I am talking about hearing space everywhere:  “Yes, of course, in the media space we find . . .”  “In the family leave space . . .”  “She works in the architectural space.”  “He spends much of his time in the nonprofit space.”  “I write in the nonfiction space.”  “My place is in the gated community space.”  What’s next? “The void space is two doors down the hall on the left, Phil.”  When did “space” become the Swiss Army Knife of placeholders?  I must have spaced out.

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Working families.  Ok, politics-speak is not where we go to enjoy elegant or even clear speech.  But this abomination has really gotten on my nerves.  First of all, I grew up in a family and I cannot recall a time when “we” worked.  Only some of us did, usually Mom and Dad, and I had a few summer jobs after I was big enough to push a lawn mower.  But that was it.  Why do American politicians worry most about policies that support–or do not tax too much–WORKING FAMILIES?   Why don’t they care about single people with jobs? Like Catholic priests.  And prison inmates.  How about poor families for whom there are no jobs?  What about retired people–and WE vote!  Come to think of it, I am in a non-working family.  See us, politicians, see us.  Or we will haunt you like your language haunts the truth!

[Dear Reader:  If you like, you can find the first installment of Language Habits here.]