Headline: The Media Is in Need of Some Mending

Acceptable English, or not?

I still find it unacceptable in written formal English, but some day soon it will be more acceptable. There's really no reason to keep all those foreign pluralization rules around. I don't mind them, but then I've studied Latin and Greek. English is tough enough as it is without burdening it with some other language's grammar.

It's acceptable to me. It will probably be singular for everyone eventually, as in what happened with "agenda."

In this Globe and Mail column, Robert Fulford talks about how he doesn't like it. A Jesuit priest says "the media is," and this prompts Fulford to say

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Which made it, of course, all the more scandalous. A teacher of the young had joined the struggle over "media"--on the side of evil.

I think of "media" as a collective which is therefore treated as a singular. That is speaking of the media as one big singular force.

In some instances, though, if you speak of the media as a group of individual organizations, as in, "All of the various media are ganged up in an outrageous conspiracy against that guy in Washington who keeps complaining about them..." then it works to treat it as a plural.

WM

I think it's important to keep media as a plural, meaning the various disseminators of news, if only to distinguish it from "mediums".

"Media" is a plural noun and should therefore take a plural verb. The situation is similar to "data", which is a word I use often every day. In speaking I will not worry overmuch about subject-verb agreement, but I try to make sure it's correct when writing.

As gooofy says, it's likely to go the same way as "agenda", but it's not so far along the road, so at the moment I try to make sure I use the plural in writing.

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"Media" is a plural noun and should therefore take a plural verb

I'm not so sure about this. I agree with matic, because otherwise we would have to say "The medium is..." evoking the immediate q, "Which medium"

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I'm not so sure about this.

Why not? The word "men" is a plural noun and we don't say "men is ..." and also "boys" is plural and we say "boys are ..."

We should therefore say "media are ...", "data are ...", etc.

According to Merriam-Webster, "media" is either singular or plural. But other dictionaries say it is plural only.

arnie: Forgive me if I was not clear, but my reason for not treating "media" always as plural is the confusion that might sometimes arise by a statement such as, "The medium has a liberal bias" since there's more than one medium; eg, tv, newspaper, magazines, etc

Perhaps we are again demonstrating the difference between pre- and de-

I agree with Dale and Wordmatic. Surely the word media is different than men in the way we use it today. It is more like faculty to me. We can use faculty as singular if you think of the collective faculty, or plural if you think of all of the separate faculty members. While I don't personally use media in the singular, I would find it grammatically correct. I don't think it is as easy as men or man.

To avoid confusion it's no problem to declare which medium is being discussed. "That news medium is so-and-so," but "those news media are thus-and-such." I'll stay with the Latin cases on this one. "Medium" has other meanings. It can be a chemical or a transportation system or a necromancer. I hope we don't have to call upon the latter to find the proper singular of this word in the near future!

I do so love Latin. It was one of the first foreign languages I studied. I found an oldish Latin textbook in some books a cousin gave me (the start of my library), and, in fourth grade decided to teach myself Latin. I made it through the 2nd or 3rd chapter before stopping. A couple of months ago, my wife, a friend of ours, and a co-worker of the latter started learning Latin, and they chose me as their instructor. All great fun. Last Sunday, I gave them some simple texts to work on, including the opening line of Alicia in terra mirabili by Lewis Carroll.

I agree with those who say media is a plural and must agree with its verb. Ifeel that one should learn how to form the plurals for all the Latin nouns we've incorporated into English. Especially those of the fourth declension, like apparatus and foetus. The singular in -us becomes a plural in -ūs.

1. The apparatus is on the table.

2. The apparatūs are in the basement.

And such like. This should hold true for the other declensions. Third: embryones insead of *embryos, corpora instead of *corpuses.

And, since we're on the subject. The horrid construction buses, which means nothing and serves only to irritate the senses, should be banished from the language herewith. Omnibus is already plural and in the dative case, for Saussure's sake. If one must use a plural for omnibus, supply a noun in front of this word, and make that plural, e.g., machinæ omnibus, or better yet, apparatūs omnibus.

Thank you, and keep the language hale and hearty.

lol, z. Who says Americans don't do irony?

Domine, dirige nos
Contra hos motores bos!

(That's treating bus as a first declension noun.)

Delightful apagogical argument, zmj! Thus have you demonstrated what a highly disjointed pidgin English is.

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Forgive me if I was not clear, but my reason for not treating "media" always as plural is the confusion that might sometimes arise by a statement such as, "The medium has a liberal bias" since there's more than one medium; eg, tv, newspaper, magazines, etc

I'm sorry. This statement won't wash. Media is the plural of medium, meaning a method of transmission. We use plurals when we are referring to more than one; singulars when there is only one.

Thus: "When I advertise, my medium of choice is direct mail. Newspapers and similar media are not sufficiently well-targetted for my purposes."

In the case of a spiritual medium, the plural is formed by adding an s. For example, "As a rule I don't believe in the utterings of mediums, but I confess that the well-known medium, Mrs Far Sighted, is more convincing than most."

I think we are agin demonstrating the difference betseen pre- and de- thought

In the "any" box enter

singular plural

and in the "exact phrase" box enter

media is

There you will find much pertinent and lively discussion

Well all y'all Latin scholars have lost me, as I never have studied it , and therefore, possibly am not qualified for membership here. Ah, if only I could study Latin with zmj and all those Latin wannabaes in CA! Latin is on my list to learn before I die, but to date, my use of the Dead Tongue has been limited to singing in choral groups performing requiea. I did love the boy singers in "A Fish Called Wanda" who sang
Miserere Dominus,
Miserere Dominus;
Canis mortus est!

I'm willing to concede that from a purist's standpoint, "media" is plural, but in certain constructions it is used and accepted as a collective and singular. The thing about a dead language is that very few people are going to be persuaded to adhere to the complex rules of its frozen, ancient grammar, when bits and pieces of that language have been absorbed into a newer, living language, where they have continued to evolve. Hey, this must mean that sometimes I am a descriptiveist after all!

Wordmata

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Originally posted by arnie:
Domine, dirige nos
Contra hos motores bos!

(That's treating bus as a first declension noun.)

God protect us
Against the motor bus?

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I'm willing to concede that from a purist's standpoint, "media" is plural, but in certain constructions it is used and accepted as a collective and singular.

Could you cite an example of such a (correct) usage?

According to my new favourite book, Merriam-Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage, singular "media" dates to the 1920s.

This is an example as a singular count noun:

"...various salts of penicillin in an aqueous media can not be administered orally." - Science, 16 Feb. 1945

There are many examples of the word as a singular collective noun, for instance:

"...the media is boomer-dominated and boomer-obsessed" - David Martin, Newsweek, 1 Nov. 1993

Here's an example from the New York Times in which the use of the word shifts back and forth between singular and plural, sometimes within the same paragraph. I believe most people would read this without even realizing it was happening.

quote:

Believe It: The Media's Credibility Headache Gets Worse
...
Compared with the news media outlets, Tylenol may have had it easy. It would be hard for the media to pitch itself as an innocent victim of its own shortcomings. And though journalists like to think of themselves as guardians of the public trust, too, opinion polls for at least two decades have shown declining faith in print and television news. Reassuring the public that these products are dependable, in turn, has proved frustratingly elusive.

Wordmatic

Domine, dirige nos
Contra hos motores bos!

O Lord, guide us
from those motor buses.

Domine dirige nos is the motto of the City of London. It's usually translated as Lord direct us. Thanks, arnie, for that poem and the followup. I have always been a great fan of Macaronic poetry. One of the jewels of my library is an 18 century copy of Il Baldus by Teofilo Folengo.

I looked into the history of embryo in Latin. It is a Greek loanword, and the Romans misinterpreted the original εμβρυον (embryon 'young one; fetus') as a 3rd declension noun when it should've been a 2nd declension neuter noun whose plural should be embrya.

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"...various salts of penicillin in an aqueous media can not be administered orally." - Science, 16 Feb. 1945

It's a good job they are (presumably) better at science than they are at grammar.

That there are many examples of the incorrect use of media as a singular noun simply means that many people get it wrong. That there are examples going back many years simply means that many people have been getting it wrong for a long time.

I am sure that, as is the case with agenda, media is headed slowly to single noun status, but it presently is a plural and I believe will thus remain unless and until the plural form "medias" gains acceptance as its plural.

It's happened with agenda/agendas already.

It is accepted with a singular verb. It's used with singular verbs by English writers in English writing. Both the Merriam Webster and American Heritage Dictionary list it as taking both singular and plural verbs. To me, these facts mean it is acceptable to many people.

I think the reason we don't often see "medias" is because "media" is a usually a collective noun that can take both a singular or plural verb, like "team" or "committee". There isn't much call for inflecting "media" into the plural "medias".

How else are we to determine if a usage is right or wrong other than looking at how it is used?

That there are many examples of the incorrect use of media as a singular noun simply means that many people get it wrong. That there are examples going back many years simply means that many people have been getting it wrong for a long time.

Ipse dixit Ricardus Anglicus. Richard's saying it is all that is needed.

I don't see much difference between seeing army as a collective and the media as well. Few people in the States use media as anything but a collective. We've already established that US and UK English differ in how they handle subject-verb concord in that case.

How else are we to determine if a usage is right or wrong other than looking at how it is used?

This is the true defining characteristic that separates the descriptivist from the prescriptivist. All else is noise in the scientific sense of the word.

Is garbage can a collective noun?

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Originally posted by zmjezhd: Ipse dixit Ricardus Anglicus.

Your position being Vox populi, vox dei?

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Originally posted by goofy: How else are we to determine if a usage is right or wrong other than looking at how it is used?

Ah, but that practically begs us to ask the question, "Used by whom?"

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Originally posted by shufitz:
Ah, but that practically begs us to ask the question, "Used by whom?"

It depends on the dialect and register we're talking about. "media" with a plural verb is still the most common. The count noun singular "media" seems to be established in advertising and technical writing. The singular collective "media" is used in speech and journalistic writing.

I believe we are all straying far from the real point here. How in the world are we going to bring this conversation back to beer and ale?

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Also sprach shufitz:

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Originally posted by zmjezhd: Ipse dixit Ricardus Anglicus.

Your position being Vox populi, vox dei?

Quid? Ricardus Anglicus deus est? O, perfidia!!!

Richard, apparently in your thinking the law is all or none. Therefore, I assume your plural of apparatus is: apparatūs.

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Richard, apparently in your thinking the law is all or none. Therefore, I assume your plural of apparatus is: apparatūs.

Not at all. As I wrote, "...I am sure that, as is the case with agenda, media is headed slowly to single noun status..."

I do not suggest that the language should never change; I suggest that, at prssent, the word media should be used as the plural of medium, not the singular.