Legal Commentary

Data is.

Media is.

Are you with me? Well, some folks aren?t.

?The data are inconclusive,? they will say. Or, ?The news media are irresponsible.?

?Media? and ?data? are mass nouns expressing uncountable quantities. When used as such ? and they almost always are ? they should be paired with the singular form of verbs. That?s my view, at any rate. And I?d say it?s well accepted.

But in academia, many folks contend these Latin-derived terms can only be used as plural nouns. ?Media is? and ?data is? are bad grammar to them. This view is especially prevalent on the science scene, but you?ll find it in legal scholarship as well. A lot of it. Over 10,000 occurrences of it in law review articles, according to Westlaw.

Now, I do not want to offend the thousands of law professors out there who?ve written ?data are? in an article. (I don?t think I?d have any friends left.) But hearing people say ?data are? drives me crazy. And when they correct me, I can?t take it at all.

The worst is Tom Clancy. Someone persuaded the techno-thriller mega-novelist that the singular ?data? is a grammatical no-no. As a result, Clancy?s got every submariner under the Atlantic talking like a tweed-coated pipe-smoking grad student ? everyone of them looking for a ?datum? that will pinpoint the location of a lost Russian sub.

Grab a soy latte, Captain Grammar, and give me a break.

Actually, grab three soy lattes: One large, two media.

So, I ask you, the PrawfsBlawg readership ? is ?data is? what it is, or is ?data is? what they aren?t?