Prompt Proofing Blog Post: Some Debatable Issues, Part 2

Not everything in grammar is cut and dried (for more debatable issues that have grammarians disagreeing, please see last month's post).

2012-07-06

VANCOUVER, BC, July 06, 2012 (Press-News.org) Not everything in grammar is cut and dried (for more debatable issues that have grammarians disagreeing, please see last month's post here).

This month we look at words taken directly from Latin and whether or not they should be treated as singular or plural. Words such as 'data' and 'media' are seen used with both singular and plural verbs and there seems to be no consensus as to which is correct, particularly with data. Both are, of course, plural nouns though the singular form 'medium' is undoubtedly more widely known, and used, than 'datum'.

So should it be 'The data shows that...' or 'The data show that...'? The latter is clearly correct and may well be insisted on by purists, yet the vast majority of people will use the former. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, data should be considered a mass noun, like 'information' and therefore should take a singular verb.

In the case of medium/media there are clearly situations where one would differentiate. You would talk of what medium an artist was working in, for example. At the same time, media is used as a mass noun for a number of different media: newspapers, TV, radio, etc. and as such, I would suggest that it is perfectly correct to follow it with the singular form of the verb. Hence, '...the media portrays X as a family man...'. Nevertheless, there are grammarians who will strongly disagree and insist that '..the media portray X as a family man...' is the only correct form.

If the context makes it clear that you are referring to more than one medium, but not using the term collectively, then, of course, it should be followed by a plural verb:

'Print and visual media offer the best exposure for this kind of advertising.'

Talking of Latin words that have plural forms ending in 'a' - my personal pet peeve is hearing people talk about the most important criteria for something - when they mean only one. Criteria is a plural noun, the singular form is criterion. Since I am, admittedly, a grammar geek, I have to confess that agenda causes me similar issues. The singular form is 'agendum', however, in this case the word has come to be universally treated as singular. 'What's on this morning's agendum?' would simply sound pretentious.

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