Mediaboss Marketing

This week I asked you to name to two-word search terms, which I denoted as red and blue. Howd you do?

No Mike, you are definitely not doing this rite. A number of you guessed something communism-related:

As it turns out, the Ngram chart for "communism" and "socialism" does closely resemble our mystery data:

But that wasn't it.

Commenter "lizziepoo" voiced a complaint several of you have raised since I started doing this thing: "It's name THOSE data. For God's sake, why must the Post be so illiterate? it's pitiful!"

Good question Lizzie! And in fact, you touched on the issue at the center of this week's challenge - is "data" plural or singular? The correct search terms are "data is" and "data are."

From a strict prescriptive grammar perspective, "data" is a plural word, so "data are" is correct, and this contest should be called "Name Those Data."

However.

Popular usage has been favoring the singular use of "data" in recent years, such that "data is" is far more popular than "data are" Google searches.

Personally I favor the singular use of the word, and I'm not alone. While I respect the viewpoint of those who apply a strict constructionist approach to their grammar, at this points "data is" sounds more natural to my ear.

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Wonkblog: Name That Data winners, week 7