Tag plural

Jun 13, 2013

Academic fields as false friends

By Martin in False friends, Scientific English Tag false friend, mathematic, physic, plural

Here are some false friends that are quite common among German native speakers. When talking about academic fields such as Physics, Mathematics or Genetics, you can quite often hear and read the false friends ‘Physic’, ‘Mathematic’ and ‘Genetic’, because in German the correct names do no have an s at the end: Physik, Mathematik and

May 30, 2013

Data is plural, or is it?

By Martin in General, Scientific English Tag data, plural, singular

Whenever I attend a scientific talk, or read scientific publications, there is a significant chance that somebody forgets about the fact that data is the plural of datum. Hence, strictly speaking, it is wrong to say This data shows that… Instead, you should say These data show that… Because the mistake is so common, some