Saturday, July 02, 2005
What's the Plural of Criteria?
Criteria is already plural as in : According to what criteria will you choose a new car to buy? By way of this example, you would use more than one factor to decide on the purchase of new car. You would undoubtedly consider the cost, colour, fuel efficiency, and safety features among other factors to make your decision.
Example 2:
The set of criteria you have presented will help us determine the right course of action.
If only one factor is being considered in a matter, then the singular form criterion should be used. His crime was the criterion by which his character was judged.
We can't help but notice however that in the spoken language and increasingly in the written form, criteria is now often used both as a singular and plural form of the noun. Grammar and usage experts discourage this practice. And I will not contradict them.
# posted by Ninja @ 5:19 PM 
