The Referendum Conundrum: Referenda or Referendums?

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The pluralization of referendum is a perpetual orthographic conundrum. Should we use referenda or referendums? Potentially, the plural in English of referendum could be either referendums or referenda. In practice, political science prefers referenda. We estimate that political scientists are three times as likely to use referenda than referendums (see table 1). In the journals we examined, seven of 10 articles chose to use referenda over referendums. In the field of journalism, the pattern is much different (see table 2), with the standard practice in major media outlets being to use only referendums. Journalism, it seems, has arrived at a different answer to this conundrum than has political science.

Table 1

Use of Referendums and Referenda in Political Science Journals, 1986-2006

Note.

Number of articles in parentheses. Percentages indicate proportion of articles using either referendums or referenda; excluded percentages represent those articles that used both terms. Data based on a Boolean search of JSTOR archive.

Table 2

Use of Referendums and Referenda in News Outlets (2008-2009)

Note.

Number of articles in parentheses. Percentages indicate proportion of articles using either referendums or referenda; excluded percentages represent those articles that used both terms. Data based on a Boolean search of LexisNexis online archive.

By choosing referendums over referenda, journalists (and a minority of scholars) are selecting a pluralization that is always correct. Referendum...