datums (grrrr)
John Pryce wrote:
> as the singular collective (e.g. line 3 of 1.1, where "datums interchange"
> is not idiomatic English even if one accepts "datums" as a valid plural).
The use of plural qualifying nouns is another one of those modern
perversions; it should be "datum interchange", "datum processing",
"system programming" etc.
On the other hand, we would have "interchange of data" as in that
case "data" is an object and not a modifier.
Interestingly, the one case where "datums" may be acceptable is
when used with a cardinal number -- maybe. "Two data" does sound
funny; I would prefer "two datum points", though that suffers from
repetition if "datum" already implies "point".
Michel. (Please excuse my off-topic rantlet)
---Sent: 2009-08-25 14:44:54 UTC