Data Is A Plural Word

| Contact Center/CRM Views and Analysis

Data Is A Plural Word

Unless you're referring to the opalescent green dude from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

This is an error made by so many people in business that today, using the word correctly sounds "odd." It may sound odd, but the word "data" is plural. The singular form of the word is "datum."

Examples:

Correct: That datum is curious.

Correct: Those data are indicative of the fact that our help desk employees spend the day playing Tetris.

Correct: Data rescued Captain Jean-Luc Picard from a group of methane-breathing green aliens.

If advanced business analytics tell us that increased efficiencies create more profit, by observing this rule, you'll be doing TMC and its editors a favor by allowing them to to save the aggregate time it normally takes them to change the verb tenses after "data" in contributed articles and news items. Those data cannot be disputed.

TES



Feedback for Data Is A Plural Word

1 Comment

"Data is a Plural Word" isn't really the whole answer.
Data are things, like facts are things. Information is stuff, like cloth is stuff. Things are counted, stuff is measured.
Many (dare I say most?) users of "data" think it is stuff, to be measured out, not counted; let them use "information" instead.

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