Your data are silly

If you listen to NPR in Boston, you've probably heard an ad (yeah, I know: it's not an "ad", they are "sponsors") for Tech Fusion. They are a data recovery firm and if you visit their web site, you might still find the motto they have used for years: "Where data is never lost".

The radio plugs have been changed recently though. They now say "Where data are never lost". Ugh.

Ok, I get it. I took four years of Latin and have been around more than a few math and stat geeks over the years. Datum, data. Fine. But in the rest of the world, we don't use it that way. The word "data" is used in the same way "money" is: plurality isn't important because we really aren't thinking of either thing as a group of individual units. The only time we treat money or data as units is when we count it; the rest of the time it's a collection where the importance comes from the aggregate. We do a similar, though opposite, thing with "news"; there are individual units of news, but we don't feel any linguistic need to drop the "s".

"Data are never lost" grinds at the back of my brain. I do not like it, and refuse to articulate so clumsily. How about you?

Comments /Opinion/latin_data.html


Thu Jun 7 16:14:18 2007: Subject:   rbailin
Data has become a mass noun, like water.



I read last year that those who care about such things have already thrown in the towel on the misuse of "enormity" to mean something huge but not necessarily evil.

Compared to this, using data with singular instead of plural verbs just isn't worth the time to even discuss it.

--Bob

Thu Jun 7 20:01:05 2007: Subject:   Cygz
That's the kind of thing that drives me insane. Do they have any idea how it sounds?! Do they think it sounds retarded to them, but they must be stupid, so they do it 'by the book'?! Is it, like so many other changes, something that had to be changed, finally, because so many idiots who never even say the word outloud wrote in complaints? Maybe I'm a little extreme but I always just say people who have to be like that should be put on a rocket bound for the sun.



Sat Jun 9 00:13:48 2007: Subject:   anonymous
Lighten up! They're addressing sophistimicated NPR listeners.


99% of the "ads" sound pompous because it appeals to the
target audience.

Sat Jun 9 12:37:06 2007: Subject:   TonyLawrence
False sophistication. Custom trumps declension when a word passes into common usage.



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