3 ms·

You are taking a prescriptive approach (which is fine), but it is just as reasonable to take the descriptive approach to linguistics and say "in modern American

You are taking a prescriptive approach (which is fine), but it is just as reasonable to take the descriptive approach to linguistics and say "in modern American English 'data' is not countable, and it is used the way 'water' is used". It is self-consistent and (currently) grammatically correct to say "this data is important" like you would say "this water is wet". I guess this implies "datum" is archaic now. At least for the linguistic/cultural bubble in which I exist.

Brybry 5y ago
Even in British English usage as an abstract mass noun with singular verbs is acceptable (possibly even the norm[1]). Usage as a plural noun is an Economist house style choice[2]. It's hard to tell how well the Economist sticks to that style choice. A Google site: search, with a date range of the last 10 years, shows no usage of "datum" (except for the article about the subject). An Google site: search for usages of "data is" in the last 10 years returns plenty of results. [1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=GB&q=%22data%20is%22,%22data%20are%22 https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=GB&q=%... [2] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2012/07/13/data-or-datum https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2012/07/13/data-or-...