The data were gathered from weather stations around the world…
I nearly spilled my coffee all over my newspaper A typo? No.
Smith was not in charge of the department when the data were thrown away…
I know all about the notion that data is plural. I have seen the complaints; but I had never before seen data used as a plural outside of the pages of a style guide. It’s like graffiti: any Italian will tell you it’s plural and so will Fowler and his ilk, but nobody writes like that. I mean style guides are all very pleasant to read, but nobody, I thought, acted on them. Data is there to complain about, not actually pluralise.
Data is one of those words that have been picked out at random for special pleading. It is, in Latin, a second declension neuter plural nomintative. But the same argument is never made about agenda and stamina both of which are also Latin plurals. Nobody ever says, ‘My stamina are failing,’ nor does any pedant or grammarian suggest that one should.
Gallows was originally a plural (because a gallows is made from several pieces of wood or galgi). But the word was already singular in Shakespeare’s time (the gallows is built stronger than the church). Hamlet 5:1
I even used to know an enthusiastic scholar of breakfasts who insisted that porridge was plural as it was a shortening of porridge oats: so ‘How are your porridge?’