Calls and e-mails inundated the Daily newsroom Wednesday from readers complaining about the headline on a story about the "Today" show feature on Decatur City Schools, which NBC broadcast Tuesday morning.

After an outcry of protest for her "bad schools" comment about Decatur in a Sept. 20 segment, "Today" real estate correspondent Barbara Corcoran visited last week to view city schools. She concluded her original assessment, based on reviewing standardized test scores on the Internet, was incomplete, and said one must observe schools and their programs firsthand to properly evaluate their effectiveness.

Callers to the newsroom felt obligated to tell our editorial staff that Wednesday's headline " 'Today' gets good grade: Correspondent gets message: Data don't show quality of schools" was grammatically incorrect.

"I hope the 'Today' show doesn't see that headline," one caller told a copy editor. "They'll take back everything good they said."

The callers and e-mailers are wrong. Or right.

The word data is a plural form of the singular noun datum. The word is of Latin origin. The plural noun "data" requires a plural verb, thus "don't."

But the word "data," although plural in form, can also take a singular verb when used as a collective — when the group or quantity in question is regarded as a single unit.

As used in the headline, the word can be interpreted either way, as in "The various data available over the Internet don't tell the whole story"; or "The collective data about city schools doesn't paint a true picture."

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