Brendan Zabarauskas on Twitter: "@_pdarragh @aatxe Hah, that's awesome! Still can't help feel internal pain whenever I hear someone say 'Legos' though. Almost as bad as stepping on a piece." / Twitter

I’m really confused about this controversy. Data is like sand. Nobody says “sand are” even though sand almost always refers to multiple grains.

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YouGov

@YouGov

· Jul 17, 2020

Stop resisting it, editors - the vast majority of people say "data" should be treated as singular, not plural "Data is" - 74% "Data are" - 14% yougov.co.uk/topics/politic

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Maybe now, but it didn't start that way. Historically, "data" was not a mass noun. There was "one datum" and "two data". You could count them. You can't count sand. Nobody says "one sand, two sand". You have "some sand", "no sand", etc. They're different types of plural nouns.

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aaron

@aatxe

Jul 20, 2020

My sense is that even the most adamant of “data is plural” folks rarely if ever use the word “datum” though. So, it’s more like “one data point, two data points, some data” akin to “one sand grain, two sand grains, some sand.”

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aaron

@aatxe

Jul 20, 2020

Admittedly though, I can hardly imagine treating data as countable. It feels viscerally wrong. I’ve never encountered anyone saying something like “ten data,” but it would genuinely feel discomforting.

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She hasn't done it with "data" specifically, but my gf has developed a dialect wherein she converts mass nouns to count nouns, eg, "I would like two breads, please." Super weird at first, but now I do it too. It's kind of fun tbh, and I can't think of a good reason not to do it!

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