English Café: “The data is …” or “The data are …”

Advanced Details: “the data is” or “the data are”

Several members of staff requested a review of the usage of the collective noun “data.” The strict grammatically correct approach is “data are,” because the word “data” is the plural of the Latin word “datum.” But, nowadays this grammar rule is widely broken by the vast majority of native English speakers.

In fact, in modern technical and business writing, you may write either “the data is” or “the data are.”

Just be sure to use a singular pronoun if you write “the data is,” i.e., you must write “this data is” NOT this data are. Similarly, if you write the plural “the data are,” and you want to use a pronoun, then you must write “these data are.”