Re: Don't say what you CANNOT do in documents
The American Heritage Dictionary employs a usage panel for the express purpose of watching and reporting on such issues, and a quick perusal of their most recent edition would be a better way of settling this than going with who shouts the loudest or most frequently.
I just did a quick lookup (using John's favorite tool, Google) and found that the 2000 edition of AHD says this (I think it was quoted earlier in the thread by someone else, as well):
"USAGE NOTE: Like the analogous etymological plurals agenda and data, criteria is widely used as a singular form. Unlike them, however, it is not yet acceptable in that use."
The dictionary writers have missed a point here if they think that the disputed use of _criteria_ is analogous to the use of _agenda_ and _data_ as singular words. In the case of _agenda_ - the doings, or things to be done, perhaps at a meeting - and _data_ - a plurality of facts or values - the originally plural words may indeed now be regarded as singular, but they are still being used to represent a plurality of the items concerned. You might refer to one item to be raised at a meeting as an agenda point or an agenda item, but never as "an agenda": that's the whole list. Similarly, you might refer to a single value or fact as a piece of data or one item of data, but not as "a data".
So it might make sense to defend the use of "criteria" to describe a singular group of a plurality of criteria: such a use could be acceptable as a grammatically singular word. But that is not what is happening: instead, "criteria" is being used to describe a singular concept, in place of the correct singular word ("criterion"). This is simply a mistake.
Yes: of course the dictionary properly includes this misuse, since the dictionary's purpose is to help readers understand what they read, right or wrong.
Brian Barker (London, UK)
b.m.barker[at]btinternet.com
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