Re: Debian 5 -- "data" is plural.
(Sorry, Ken. resending correctly to list.)
On Tuesday 20 May 2014 16:00:42 Ken Heard wrote:
> Please note everybody that the word "data" is plural. The beginning
> of the last line quoted above should consequently read "all the
> scientific data *are* backed up." Other posts in this thread make the
> same error. The singular of data is datum.
This is of course, gramatically correct. But I would argue that, although in
formal writing it should certainly be treated as a plural, in colloquial
speech it no longer is. I would also argue that emails are colloquial speech
not formal writing.
This does not apply in the same way to all of your "group". Where it is
needful to have both a singular and a plural, as in bacterium/bacteria and
criterion/criteria it would be perverse to make a plural by putting an s on
the plural! (Though some people do.)
Language changes, whether one wishes it or not. We no longer speak the
English of Shakespeare or the King James' Bible. I still sometimes catch
myself using the present subjunctive in speech. I do not think that I am
correct to do so. For this usage it is dead. Indeed, for all intents and
purposes, the imperfect subjunctive is dead.
Lisi
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