The New York Times recently published an article saying "the media has focused" on unimportant issues. Aha! Even editors at the best newspapers don't understand that media is plural, and the phrase should have read, "the media have focused."
Alas, those editors are one step ahead of me. Modern grammarians have huddled and determined that media can be either singular or plural. Generally, if you use media to mean the collective press, it's singular. If you use media to indicate a collection of individual mediums, it's plural.
The same goes for data. If we say, "The data proves a link between reading and intelligence," we are seeing the data as a single collection of facts. If we say, on the other hand, that "The data prove a link betweenÖ," we're saying that the data are not a single collection of facts, but individual facts that just happen to be collected.
Confused yet? Here's the good news: Even if you don't fully understand the difference between the singular and plural versions of media, data, none, majority, total, faculty, everyone, and other nouns on the singular-plural cusp, you don't have to worry. Treat them as either singular or plural. There's no one right answer, and better yet, there's no wrong one.
Neil Chethik, aka the Grammar Gourmet, is writer-in-residence at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning (www.carnegieliteracy.org) and author of FatherLoss and VoiceMale. The Carnegie Center offers writing classes and seminars for businesses and individuals. Contact Neil at nchet@aol.com or 859-254-4175.