Every 1 Must Read

[BC_Programmer]

Umm ..., harry, what's the cause of that phenomena with old geezers?  You never capitalize.  And, you do know sentences end with a period, right?

Oh, let me try! Also, "friend's" shouldn't  have an apostrophe there, neither should tv's, pc's, game's, phone's, or people's... well, maybe peoples, since that's implying possession.

[Allan]

Another one of my linguistic peeves - "phenomena". You hear it misused on TV all the time too. Phenomena, like "data", is plural. The singular is "phenomenon"

[harry 48]

us old geezers don't care any more we have done all that short of stuff in the past we

don't have to impress  any-one any more

we write , sleep , drive , eat how we like , when we like 

at least we can write big word's and big long sentence's that people can read   

they may not be right ,    but do i look like i really care 

[BC_Programmer]

at least we can write big word's and big long sentence's that people can read   

the longest word in that post is "sentence's" and it shouldn't have an apostrophe.

[soybean]

Another one of my linguistic peeves - "phenomena". You hear it misused on TV all the time too. Phenomena, like "data", is plural. The singular is "phenomenon"

Having made a serious blunder, soybean weeps profusely.

[Allan]

That's okay. I'm getting a kick out of the turn this thread has taken. Haven't had a chance to make use of my undergrad in English for a very long time

[Geek-9pm]

So  if data are plural, why can't we cal it them datas?

Well., because...

Datas is a Brazilian municipality located in the north-center of the state of Minas Gerais. Its population as of 2007 was 5,418 living in a total area of 309 km². The city belongs to the statistical mesoregion of Jequitinhonha and to the statistical microregion of Diamantina. It became a municipality in 1962.

In the above qutoe the term is singular even though it has 5,318 separate entities.

Her ye Her yw... let it be know to all...

    DATA are plural
    DATAS is singular

  I have been waiting so long to post that.

[kpac]

So then, what is a piece of data?

[Allan]

So then, what is a piece of data?

datum

[Allan]

    DATA are plural

data IS plural, not are

[Helpmeh]

    DATA are plural
    DATAS is singular

DATA is plural.
DATUM is singular.
BACTERIA is plural.
BACTERIUM is singular.

[BC_Programmer]

hmm, plural words of that sort have different conjugation rules; you don't say, "the data are all saved" you say "the data is all saved" same with bacteria... the words are treated more like a singular word grammatically, even though they are plural.

[evilfantasy]

Click to enlarge:

[Helpmeh]

hmm, plural words of that sort have different conjugation rules; you don't say, "the data are all saved" you say "the data is all saved" same with bacteria... the words are treated more like a singular word grammatically, even though they are plural.

I remember learning about that sort of thing before...

Like PANTS is singular yet plural...or how water can't be plural...

[harry 48]

I remember learning about that sort of thing before...

Like PANTS is singular yet plural...or how water can't be plural...

can you not have one pant ?