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  • 184 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: August 9th, 2023
  • CrayonRosary@lemmy.worldtoToday I Learned@lemmy.world•Today I learned hyphenated words are largly obsoleteEnglish
    16·
    1 day ago

    I like to use them when words create a unit of thought. Like line-of-sight, and such. It really helps readability. It prevents people from having to think too hard about certain sentences when it’s ambiguous which words belong to what part of the sentence. Especially when the expression contains function words like “of”.

    However, I’m a fan of just making multiple words into compound words, like bumblebee. That doesn’t work well with something like lineofsight, though.

    As a side note, I wish we would being back the diaeresis in favor of hyphens in words like co-op. It used to be coöp, and that so much more fun. Or words like reëlect. Even when it’s not abbreviated, the diaeresis makes it more obvious to readers how coöperative is pronounced. Or any other time where two vowels in a row are pronounced separately.

  • CrayonRosary@lemmy.worldtoToday I Learned@lemmy.world•The Singular of Data is DataEnglish
    3·
    21 days ago

    Brits who say “Microsoft are doing a thing” are poking knitting needles into my ears every time!

    It’s not plural. Microsoft is a company. A. One!

    It doesn’t matter that it’s a company of individuals. Next your going to tell me my person is plural because I’m made from many cells. “CrayonRosary are mistaken about language!” No!

    Bonus: Math is singular, too, because mathematics is singular. It’s not the plural of mathematic!

    We overthrew your rule specifically because of this one language issue!

  • CrayonRosary@lemmy.worldtoToday I Learned@lemmy.world•The Singular of Data is DataEnglish
    1·
    21 days ago

    But there is a smallest unit, which is called a bit. Data can be broken down into smaller, countable units.

    That’s not a particularly compelling argument. There’s a smallest unit of sand, too, but we still use a mass noun for it.

    Besides, dictionary researchers agree it’s both a mass noun and a plural noun. People use it both ways. Here’s what Merriam Webster says about it. (I’m going to rework it to reduce the wordiness because it was so dense!)

    Data leads a life of its own quite independent of datum, of which it was originally the plural. It occurs in two constructions:

    1. as a plural noun (like earnings)
      • taking a plural verb and plural modifiers (such as these, many, a few), but not cardinal numbers
      • serving as a referent for plural pronouns (such as they, them)
    2. as an abstract mass noun (like information)
      • taking a singular verb and singular modifiers (such as this, much, little)
      • being referred to by a singular pronoun (it).

    Both constructions are standard. The plural construction is more common in print, evidently because the house style of several publishers mandates it.

    So OP’s post is only half right, if even that much. In common speech, data is a mass noun, but many scientists and publishers still treat it as a plural noun. I would even venture most do.

    Working as a programmer, most people I’ve interacted with use it as a mass noun, but not all. Language evolves, and the mass noun version is just as acceptable in most circles, but it certainly isn’t worthy of a “you should know” or “today I learned it’s actually a mass noun.”

  • CrayonRosary@lemmy.worldtoToday I Learned@lemmy.world•TIL that Alabama has by far the highest amount of death row inmates by capita of any US stateEnglish
    2·
    26 days ago

    It’s not about being normal. This data is for scientists. The denomination was a deliberate choice given the various sizes of the data. It might be as low as single digits in some cases.

    We use decimals all the time. We’re not dumb. But when making direct comparisons of values, it’s a simple fact that comparing 5 to 20 is easier than comparing 0.05 to 0.2. This is a scientific fact. It’s easier for your brain to parse. You can’t deny that. Go ask a psychologist. In addition, the data is cleaner. It’s easier to print “5” than “0.05”, and then you mention the denominator under the graph or table of data.

    Every engineer and scientist in the US uses metric, and it doesn’t matter what the average person uses. Proper home cooks find bread recipes with metric weights for ingredients, for example. Woodworkers use feet and inches. People who use the Imperial system are just people using what they know. It’s entirely moot to this conversation. I don’t know why you keep bringing up fractions and the Imperial system as if that adds any weight to your argument about the actual topic at hand. The topic being scientists using a deliberate unit of measure to make it easy to print values and compare them at a glance.