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"The data indicates..."

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Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts
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by cbenk121 » Wed Dec 02, 2009 9:25 pm
Here's a sentence I encountered in my work training today:

"The data indicates that sales are rising."

"Data", from my understanding, is plural. However, "indicates" is the singular form of "to indicate". This appears to be a subject-verb agreement error.

However, I could also see "data" being a COLLECTIVE noun, no different from "army" or "group". "The data indicate that sales are rising" sounds horrible to my ear...but that's not always a guarantee of correct grammar :).

Any thoughts on this?
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Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts
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by cbenk121 » Wed Dec 02, 2009 9:29 pm
Never mind, brick2009 provided this explanation here (https://www.beatthegmat.com/much-singula ... 48628.html):


"Yes.. all uncountable nouns are Singular

Rules for Using Uncountable Nouns:

>Uncountable nouns only used in the singular tense.

> A or an cannot be used with uncountable nouns. "The" can be used with uncountable nouns."

So because "data" is an uncountable noun, even though it's plural, here it needs a singular verb. Hence, "the data indicates that..." is correct.
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