@rah 25 August 2021 more from that month

As a single word Data is the one word that represents the ultimate in academic pomposity. Data is or Data are ? This Data or Those Data? Think about it logically, Data is a synonym of information and information is an uncountable noun, You do not have informationS, only pieces / bits of / snippets of information etc What I have just said, but the letter of the law, is NOT true, but it is not pragmatic. Strictly speaking Data belongs to that group of irregular plurals so it has a direct relationship to words like man / men and woman / women However, here is the rub. We quite commonly switch between woman and women and man and men depending on the context. So it begs the question is Data is plural what is the singular. The majority of people don't actually know, but as a Latin word the singular is datum. So here is where the pragmatics come in, NOBODY in the history of the world has ever said 'That's an interesting datum; 'This datum shows' Wow I have just uncovered an amazing datum.' So with nobody ever saying DATUM the usage of phrases like THESE achieve nothing more than to show off the academic's knowledge which is tantamount to a middle aged man growing a ponytail and buying a two seater sports car, or even worse chasing a girl 30 years younger than him. So let's drop the BS and say this / that data etc Rant over!