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Re: Spelling and Grammar in our e-mails



Michael Edmiston wrote:

> Student writes: My data was pretty accurate.
> I write: Subject and verb don't agree in number.
> Student says: Why did you write this, there aren't any numbers in this
> sentence?
> I say: Data is plural and was is singular.

I understand the point here.

But IMHO the word "data" isn't the best example to
illustrate the point.

To my ears, "data" has become an uncountable
collective, like "mathematics" or "linguistics" --
words that are plural in form but almost exclusively
construed as singular. What was long ago called a
datum is now a data point.

This is a good thing if you ask me. People _think_
of data as a collective, and a word was needed
to express this thought. "Data" was the obvious
candidate to step into this role.