In my academic writing, I always compose sentences so that it is impossible to tell whether I am treating the word "data" as a plural or as a collective singular.

Never "This data shows..." or "These data were gathered from...", always "This body of data shows..." or "The study gathered its data from..."

Because I had a professor who was an annoying pedant about it, and I refused to give them any material. Some habits just stick.

#academia #writing #spite