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Could use some work

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"The Air Force Hurricane Hunters recently found have been
investigating Delta this morning, and recently reported maximum flight-level winds of 125 kt and peak SFMR surface winds of 99 kt."

Things like this happen so I’m not criticizing, I’m just commenting that they are a bit hard to process before the first sip of coffee.

This, on the other hand, is inexcusable, especially at 5:43am:

Based on a blend of this data,

Data is a plural noun. THESE DATA.

4 Responses

  1. Not to pick nits, but this from the OED (and my online access to the big book has lapsed, so I have to copy this in from the physical version):

    “In everyday use, however, ‘data’ is generally treated as a singular noun, and sentences such as ‘the data was analysed (with a singular verb) are quite normal.

    Now, a discussion about the difference between “quite normal” and “right” is certainly eligible for participation in this game, but if they’re going to spell “analyzed” with an “s,” well let’s just say that I can tell when I’m whipped.

    1. Okay. First of all, (and when I start off like that everyone who knows me either settles in or walks away) that was a sentence written by a person who no doubt thinks of himself as a “scientist.” One should not get me started on scientists who should MF-ing know better. We’re talking about Emily Post using the wrong fork at dinner. THERE ARE STANDARDS. Meteorologists have taken advanced stats. To type “data is” should just grate on their ears. In in fact, their fingers should be incapable of typing that series of letters.

      Second, it is one thing for me to use a dinner fork to eat my salad when John and I are eating supper while watching a movie. It is quite another for a formal dinner table to be set w/o a salad fork just b/c it’s “quite normal” to eat salad with a dinner fork.

      If the OED has blessed this, we are doomed.

      This is how civilizations fall into decline. Failure to uphold the good, the right, and the standard without well-examined reason.

      Mencken has a little bit of discussion of the z-s issue in that tome of his.

      Whew. Thanks for that. I needed to blow off some steam. Not to prattle on but I am in a “workshop” right now that John is running. It’s awesome and hard core and on my iPad that’s clipped on to a tripod. Here I am on my laptop looking at various weather apps b/c I have to leave at some point and go to campus and resume the workshop there and then drive home probably in the pouring rain. Meanwhile, on my phone is Ann Sophie who is funnier than hell texting me about the workshop, which she too is attending, and telling me that John and I crack her up– which I take to be a common everyday use phrase and thus okay to end in a preposition.

      (This particular talk is interesting but not up my alley hence my lack of attention to it.)

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