I suspect I’m going to get a kicking for this, but let’s boldly go…
I think the time has come to abandon the concept of ‘data’ as a plural and to make it instead a singular collective term. To 99% of the population saying ‘The data in this study are conclusive’ just sounds clumsy, uncomfortable and, well, wrong. Make it ‘The data in this study is conclusive.’
It’s a bit like when I pour sugar from a spoon. I say ‘the sugar is falling into my cup’, because I’m referring to a collection of sugar crystals. Similarly, we can say ‘the data is’ rather than ‘the data are’ because we’re referring to a collection of data points.
Of course purists would argue that the word data is plural in Latin, so must be plural in English. Sorry, that’s outdated sophistry. It’s on a par with those who strangulate their sentences to carefully extract any split infinitives. (Sorry, sorry, I meant ‘carefully to extract any split infinitives.’) ‘But you can’t split an infinitive,’ they whine. ’It’s all one word in Latin.’ So what? I’m not writing Latin. Even Fowler thinks it’s a fuss over nothing.
Take a deep breath and write ‘this data is not suitable’ rather than ‘these data are not suitable’… or whatever. Even if it comes hard, you will have taken one small step towards scientists being able to interface better with human beings.
I tried. I tried to write out the sentence you proposed but I just couldn’t get past the ‘this data’ without giving in to the overwhelming urge to hit the backspace key and change it to ‘these data’.
I don’t know if I can overcome my conditioning. Data as plural was so drilled into me by my mentors and heroes. My grad school PI would have a visible physical reaction when someone said ‘data is’ in a scientific setting.
But your cause is not a lost one! I think the usage of data as plural is dying out. The death of data as a plural word seems to be significantly accelerated by the overlap in science and tech – computer nerds feel strongly that the word data is singular and that science geeks are dead wrong for using it as plural : )
Kick.
NNOOOOOOO!!!! I abandoned (and deleted) an angry post about people using data as singular just yesterday. I got too upset and snobby about it and decided not to post it.
Equally grating: “I’m an alumni.”
Yesterday’s anger was actually inspired by reading a student paper in which “opening Pandora’s Box” was used to mean “bringing lots of wonderful new things”.
Anyway, both Oxford and Grammar Girl say that you can use data as either singular or plural (as long as you’re consistent) so I guess you have grammar authorities on your side. Bah.
I was actually going to make a survey about what people use (“data is” or “data are”) and then ask if they were scientists or took Latin in school etc.
That’s how engrossed I was in the topic yesterday, and you brought all my frustration back again!
My reaction was similar to (but milder than) Eva’s!
Any poll should also ask whether people say “day-ta” or “dah-ta”. I use day-ta, but I seem to be in the minority lately.
I thought everyone said “day-ta” until my sister told me that everyone in her group in Sydney says “dah-ta”! Now she says it too, to not seem out of place.
I ought to stress I’m not saying use data for a single data point. I would never say ‘a data’ – I’m using data as a singular collective term. I would still say datum or data point for an individual piece of data.
I’d side with Brian here, despite having this deeply ground into me as a subeditor of many years.
The day-ta versus dah-ta issue is an interesting one. I’ve only ever heard rata, as in pro rata, pronounced rah-ta…so maybe dah-ta has something going for it. I’m a day-ta man myself, though.
day-ta, just to piss off the shackledraggers. And I could never bring myself to say ‘autoclahve’, eether.
Comparing the pronunciations of words like data and rata has essentially no meaning in the English language. Just look at all the different pronunciations of -ough: though, through, cough, enough, bough…