Slashdot Mirror
It's Time to End the 'Data Is' vs 'Data Are' Debate (vice.com)
dmoberhaus writes: After receiving too many irate emails about using "data" in the singular, a reporter spoke to two lexicographers about how the language changes over time and why it's perfectly acceptable and perhaps even "standard" to use data as a singular noun, rather than a plural noun in an attempt to settle an old debate. Peter Sokolowski, a lexicographer for the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, told the reporter that data's transition between its historical roots and contemporary use is related to a lexical phenomenon called "semantic bleaching," where a word's original meaning is lost or diminished over time. An example of semantic bleaching include the contemporary use of the word "literally," whose Latin root, littera, means "letter." In the case of "data," it has transitioned from "things given" to mean something like "a collection of information in aggregate" when used in everyday speech.
Are we sure it is?
I hate when people pronounce gif as gif instead of gif. Everyone knows it's gif!
How is this a debate? Look in a dictionary. The word has a literal dictionary definition. :-)
The two dictionaries I just checked say data is the plural of datum.
People who use it differently either knowingly choose to (which is fine with me) or they are ignorant.
"Data are an Android." No sir, I don't like it.
They participate in inane meaningless debates like "is data plural or singular"?, while the rest of the world just laughs at them and keeps on.
No it aren't.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
kinda like "deer" is both the singular of "deer", and also the plural of "deer".
Plural in Latin, singular mass noun in English, does it need to be any more complicated? Strictly speaking, if you mean to write the latin word in English prose then you should italicize it.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I still want to know why in the UK they say "in hospital" instead of "in the hospital". What's up with that? And don't get me started with "math" vs "maths".
...but then I read the summary and was too bored to figure out what the opposite case is supposed to be.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The real distinction is between a 'mass noun' and a 'count noun.' When your server asks you "would you like french fries or mashed potato?", french fries is a count noun and mashed potato is a mass noun. We usually use water as a mass noun, but biblically, waters meant multiple (countable) bodies of water.
So the question about 'data' is whether it has transitioned from something countable to something measured in bulk ( e.g. ounces of rice versus grains of rice). The claim here is that more people are using data as a mass noun, and I tend to agree.
Full disclosure: decades ago I was a C student in highschool Latin.
I'll stop saying "data are" when the rest of you stop using plural verbs with collective nouns. The team "IS" winning, not the team "are" winning. Sure, they may say it like that across the pond (the UK), but here (the US) collective nouns are singular and take a singular verb (most of the time - there are a few exceptions).
That's nice that you knew some Latin and are also familiar with the mass/count distinction, but I question whether you're a native English speaker, when you claim that a server asks if you want "mashed potato". It's always always always mashed potatoes.
That typo claim factually incorrect.
As in " One million dollars was spent . . ." instead of "were spent".
It was named aluminum by the discoverer and renamed because it didn't sound like those other metals.
At this time, both are accepted.