Singular and plural. Common problems with singular and plural

The content of these guidelines is taken from the Vives University Network’s Interuniversity Style Guide for Writing Institutional Texts, an interuniversity project in which the UPC participated with the support of the Secretariat for Universities and Research of the Government of Catalonia.

• The word data
• Areas of knowledge

The word data

• The word data can be singular or plural. Be consistent across contexts.
  
  

  The data is useless because the file has been corrupted.

  The data were collected in December. They show a 15% increase in student intake.

• In science, data tends to be plural.

Areas of knowledge

• Some names of academic and scientific disciplines end with an s and appear to be plural, but take a singular verb 

  when they are treated as an area of knowledge or as a subject of study

  
  

  Economics is commonly regarded as a soft science. The mathematics of computational chemistry is of significance to chemists.

  
  

  When they are not, use the plural.

  The economics of university services are complex.
  The mathematics of our everyday calculations are of no significance to us.
  
  

• When the discipline economics is used as an adjective, it maintains its form with a final s. The adjective economic, without the s, has a different meaning.
  
  

  The Department is beginning a series of CPD courses for its economics lecturers.
  Attaining sufficient economic support is a vital aspect of university governance.

• A few terms which when used in a generic sense are plural in Catalan (consells, finances, negocis, notícies) take the singular form of the verb in English (advice, finance, business, news).