So, what's the deal with the usage of data/datum? I most frequently see "data" used as both singular and plural, so it sounds reasonable to me. But then an occasional "datum" pops up, and I start to wonder about the correctness of such things.
Thoughts, my vast audience?
4 comments:
Technically speaking, data are plural and datum is singular, but it is more or less accepted to use data in both situations. There are, of course, always the nitpickers who insist on datum, but these are often the same people who worry about "who" versus "whom". This is actually more a question of Latin conjugation than of English, so many, many native English speakers get this one wrong.
The origin of the word is Latin, and the singular is datum, which is a neuter singular word, so the plural is created by removing the "um" and adding an "a" to make data. There are several other words in English that follow the same pattern -- forum/fora, quorum/quora, for example -- but you will see people writing forums or quorums.
When you are talking about a collection of pieces of information, you should use data; when you are talking about a single piece of information, use datum. Data is commonly misused for both cases, and in fact I have even heard people say "datas" (just heard, not read thank goodness!).
"Data" is a collective noun, like family, team, school, church (those last two when referring to the people of the institutions), so the next question is, should the verb be singular or plural third person? Do you say "The family are happy to be on vacation" or "The team have won every game?" You do if you speak the British version of English, but not the American version. So, depending on the standard followed by the journal, you might see "The data indicate..." or "The data indicates..."
Hopefully that was not more than you wanted to know!
Nitpicking pedantic scientific editor / proofreader here! Data are plural. End of. Just because lots of people use data in the singular, doesn't mean they're right!
Favourite nitpicking pedantic scientific editor / proofreader joke:
Data are my favourite Star Trek character
:)
I'm with Cath. And I always proof my writing for this.
My boss, talking with a postdoc the other day, said, "The data is the data." I piped up, "Are!" Yes, I'm *that* person. :P
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