The United States is a country, and the United Nations is an organization, so logically the Toronto Maples Leafs is a hockey team.

But most Canadians – even those who cheer for the Canadiens – know that the Maple Leafs are an NHL club.

Which brings us into the slippery arena of plural words in English, where common sense gets slapped around from time to time, and even the most careful writers have been known to fall.

A few weeks ago (mid-August 2001), Canadian police seized evidence from a Russian oil tanker suspected of being involved in a deadly hit-and-run accident with a U.S. fishing trawler. When CBC News Online posted an update, some of our editorial staff debated which headline was correct:

RCMP board suspect boat in Nfld.
RCMP boards suspect boat in Nfld.

After deciding the word boat should actually be ship, a ruling was still needed on whether RCMP is singular or plural.

RCMP IS, RCMP ARE

Which is right? It depends on context as well as a measure of conditioning.

The RCMP is definitely a police force. But the entire organization does not collectively climb on vessels, take paint samples and interrogate people accused of specific crimes.

Years ago, CBC Radio adopted a policy of treating RCMP as a plural word most of the time. We would never say "police is investigating," it was argued, so why would we write "Royal Canadian Mounted Police is investigating?" According to long-standing convention at the CBC, therefore, the preferred headline would be "RCMP board suspect ship."

The recommended test: think about the implied word missing after RCMP. Is it "officers" (plural) or "force" (singular)? Since members of the RCMP are the ones who look for clues and make arrests, we almost always consider RCMP a collective plural. ("RCMP have a new lead in the murder case.")

But in a few contexts, when the writer or speaker is obviously referring to the RCMP as a whole, the abbreviation ends up being treated as a collective singular. ("The RCMP is considered one of the finest forces in the world.")

The CBC's approach can be summed up this way:

R ather
C onfusing
M ainly
P lural

The Globe and Mail offers similar advice in its 1998 Style Book: "RCMP is normally plural ('the RCMP are investigating'), but the ear may demand a singular verb if the verb leads into a singular noun ('the RCMP is a force with a long history')."

Not all newsrooms across the country embrace these guidelines, however, which is why you see and hear RCMP treated as a singular term more often by some journalists than by others.

MEDIA, DATA

"The media," playwright Tom Stoppard once wrote. "It sounds like a convention of spiritualists."

While the word medium may conjure up different definitions, there is rarely confusion over the meaning of media. Deciding if the latter should be considered a plural word, however, is another matter.

Some people prefer treating media as a fused entity made up of all print, broadcast and Web journalists ("the media is partly to blame for violence at school.")

Others argue it should be a plural term ("the media have let the government get away with murder.") They consider this approach better not merely because of traditional rules governing Latin roots (medium, media), but because we still distinguish between the various parts that make up the whole: magazines, newspapers, radio, television, the Internet, and so forth.

Some people apply the same philosophy to words like strata, criteria and agenda because they still find it worthwhile to be able to single out rings in the tree trunk (stratum, criterion and agendum.)

Data, on the other hand, is now viewed exclusively as a collective singular by many English authorities who choke on awkward-sounding sentences like "the data are almost ready for analysis." Why? Unlike a specific medium or criterion, we rarely think about an individual datum (the figure 12.378, for instance.)

Instead, such numbers are gathered and stored like grains of rice in a jar until statisticians cook up something they hope we'll be able to digest. So we end up with phrases like "the data is incomplete" and "the data supports the theory."

As Bill Bryson puts it in his Dictionary of Troublesome Words, "The shift is clearly in the direction of treating data as a singular, and a generation from now anyone who says 'The data are here' may seem as fussy as the nineteenth-century newspaper editor who sent one of his reporters a telegram asking 'Are there any news?' (to which reportedly came the reply: 'No, not a single damn new')."

BACTERIA GROWS ON YOU

Words like bacteria remind us that our language is alive. Years ago it was invariably considered a plural term, but nowadays many people find it odd to write or utter sentences like "the bacteria are deadly" or "bacteria have been found in drinking water."

Some authorities insist on preserving these plural constructions. The 1998 New Oxford Dictionary of English, for instance, notes that "bacteria is sometimes mistakenly treated as a singular form" by people unfamiliar with its Latin origins.

Despite this criticism, phrases like "the bacteria is spreading" have become quite common. Why? The 1997 Oxford Guide to Canadian English Usage points out that the singular bacterium is used almost solely by the medical and scientific communities. So perhaps most of us simply don't think of the word bacteria as a plural term any more.

"In everyday English, 'bacteria' is also used as a singular noun meaning a strain of bacteria," observes the guide's authors, Margery Fee and Janice McAlpine. This has certainly been the trend in journalism over the years, both in Canada and the United States.

Is it natural evolution? Unfortunate mutation? Perhaps we should hold a referendum? But if the results were close, and we had to conduct more than one vote, would we end up with referendums or referenda?

RHINOS AND REFERENDA

It may come as a surprise to some people, but virtually all authorities consider referenda and referendums equally acceptable. Both are included in major dictionaries, which often list "dums" before "da" because it's more common.

The preference for using an "s" to make the word plural became clear in Canada during the 1991-92 constitutional debate over the Charlottetown Accord. Most of the country's big newspapers used the term referendums, according to the Strathy Language Unit at Queen's University.

Although some purists might not be happy about this development, Bill Bryson and other word buffs have pointed out that it's illogical to insist on imposing old rules of Latin, Greek or other languages on English terms based solely on etymology. Otherwise we would wind up paying car and home insurance premia, and going to bus termini to catch rides to sports stadia.

Perhaps rhinoceros best illustrates the folly of foisting archaic appendages on words.

A few dictionaries list rhinoceri as the plural form, but it's considered bogus by some grammarians who argue that rhinocerotes is actually correct because the original noun came to English as a blend of Latin and Greek. The word rhinocerotes has been obsolete for more than a century, however, replaced by rhinoceroses.

It's worth noting that writers can avoid a lot of unnecessary grief simply by hacking a few letters off the end of this formidable beast. The word rhinos may be less formal than rhinocerotes or rhinoceroses, but that's no reason to turn up one's nose.

ADDENDA AND CONCLUSION

Plural puzzles are everywhere. In their book Sleeping Dogs Don't Lay, Richard Lederer and Richard Dowis pose a few dandies. For instance, which is correct: "The couple was married five years ago," or "the couple were married five years ago?" Although some of us might immediately shout "was," the authors argue that the answer is actually both. (Otherwise we would be left with bizarre sentences like "the couple was married five years ago, but now it is divorced and living in separate apartments.")

"Aren't I being a bit silly accepting their claim about the word couple?" you might ask. It's difficult to answer this without posing another question about plurals: If the contraction "aren't I being a bit silly" is OK, why is "I are not" so wrong? Indeed, until a few hundred years ago, constructions like "you was not there" were considered correct when addressing one other person – a perfectly logical use of a singular verb. Today, however, we say "you were not there" without giving the word were a second thought.

Facing tricky rules, and some contradictory conventions, it's easy to mismatch subjects and verbs. Language aficionado William Safire once came under fire in the New York Times after writing the following: " … 'Conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman' is one of those phrases that sounds as if it comes out of Kipling." In a later column he acknowledged that it comes should have been they come because at this point of his sentence he was referring to "those phrases."

Usually decisions about singular or plural terms can be made quickly and objectively. Sometimes, however, the choice is subjective. ("The media are" versus "the media is.") Although authorities may try to persuade us with everything from history to logic ("the data are" versus "the data is"), we're still left with a choice.

Regional customs obviously play a part in how we write and speak. British novelist Kingsley Amis, who was a stickler for rules about language, once came to the defence of the expression England are used to describe a cricket match.

"Grammatical parvenus get a lot of fun out of demonstrating they have learnt to count up to two by pouncing on plural subjects with singular verbs and vice versa," Amis wrote in his 1997 The King's English: A Guide to Modern Usage. "Anybody with a tittle of wit knows that country-plus-plural refers to a sporting event or something similar."

In Canada, on the other hand, it's hard to imagine this tradition catching on. Hockey fans may enjoy watching the Flames play the Oilers, but how many of us would say that "Calgary have a rivalry with Edmonton?"

Before ribbing anyone who's fond of England are, however, we should probably take another look at Toronto's NHL club. If Amis were alive today, he might well ask why the Maple Leafs aren't called the Maple Leaves. A crime against the Queen's English? It's doubtful the RCMP are investigating.