What Do/Does the Data Show?

Abstract

You’re editing a document when you come across this sentence: “Follow-up data from a large sample was used to estimate the incidence of carcinoma.” Sounds good. Right? Wait, should it be “Follow-up data from a large sample were…” instead? Is the word data a singular or plural noun? Yes. There are generally 2 approaches when it comes to words such as data and bacteria, common terms that are of Latin origin and appear often in scientific documents. One is more of a “purist” approach, treating these words as the plural nouns they are in Latin (singular forms would be datum and bacterium). The other is a more contemporary-language approach, recognizing that modern English speakers would rarely if ever use the word datum in common parlance, and perhaps not even in formal scientific writing. So which is it? Well, reference sources themselves vary in their recommendations. The Plurals chapter (chapter 9) in the AMA Manual of Style, 11th edition, notes: “A few nouns are usually used in the plural form; however, the distinction between plural and singular should be retained where appropriate” and gives the following examples: data/datum, criteria/criterion, media/medium, and phenomena/phenomenon.1 Ok makes sense: “The data are what they are.” But wait, there is a footnote on that page: Exception: when referring to social media, news media, or the media, use a singular verb. The same applies when referring to big data as a term for extremely large, often unstructured data sets that can be mined for business or social […]