Talk:1429: Data

What should "off-screen" be called in the transcript? I just put that since I didn't know what else to say. Also, someone needs to a) explain the Kirk/Picard situation and b) explain the title text. Sorry for not doing it myself, but I'm editing on my phone so there are probably errors that people need to fix and other people know far more about it anyway. Athang (talk) 04:42, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Based on looking through some other transcripts, it looks like the convention is "off-screen". Also, fixed some typos in your comment. Cheeselover724 (talk) 06:06, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

The comic refers tp "pedants on all sides", which implies there is some kind of debate/dispute about the issue in the grammatical world. If someone who is aware of this dispute were to explain the details of it and/or provide links to sites that discuss it, I think the explanation would be greatly improved. 108.162.219.180 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

There seems to be an ongoing dispute of whether to rigidly stick to the latin form (datum singular, data plural), or adjust to the way it is far more commonly used. There appears to be divided opinion amongst grammar pedants, hence the 'on all sides'. Data are or data is? - Guardian Newspaper, Is Data Is, or Is Data Ain’t, a Plural? - WSJ -- Pudder (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I always thought the noun data was non-quantifiable like "gasoline" which you'd need a unit to pluralize. "This piece of data suggests more than those gallons of gasoline"... 173.245.48.79 05:03, 3 October 2014 (UTC)BLuDgeons

I added some info on Kirk vs. Picard, but I'm not sure how useful or understandable it is. Sorry in advance. Cheeselover724 (talk) 06:01, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

As someone pretending (for purposes of this comment) to speak with a classic British Cockney, what's the matter with "an hypercorrection habit"? Brettpeirce (talk) 14:34, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. The consonant 'h' sound is not always preceded by "a". Is it quite common for other words starting with consonant 'h' to be preceded by "an". One is example is "An historic occasion". MrBigDog2U (talk) 14:28, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

"Hotel" (yes, with the French connection) is the classic test, IME, for dropped or kept haiches (or 'aiches), with the middle-classes tending towards using "a hotel" whilst both the lower and upper classes gravitate towards "an 'otel" (for different reasons, with different empheses). Of course, if the person has an affectation (or "haffectation") "an hotel" (or, more like, "ane hotel") or even "han 'otel" can arise, to frankly ridiculous degrees. But this is just personal observation, and may not survive even inter-regional train travel, never mind transatlantic relocation... 141.101.98.247 16:11, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

An hero. Just sayin. Diszy (talk) 17:49, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

I always took "fora" to be tongue-in-cheek mockery of pedantry rather than a frank insistence on proper grammar Djbrasier (talk) 13:22, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

You were lucky that accusative and nominative in second declension neuter have matching endings, otherwise pedants would prey on "I always took fora" part of your comment :) Either way, please consider giving forīs a benefit of the doubt. Without forōrum and their memorable name, xkcd wouldn't be the same :) Nyq (talk) 14:12, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Would it be worthwhile emphasizing that "hypercorrection" is a specialist term, employed by those studying language, grammar, and its development over time/history. Some might think that the term is merely descriptive, something along the lines of "hyper/taking-to-the-max tendencies to do stuff correctly". Rather, a definition would be something like "a non-standard usage that results from over application of a perceived grammatical rule" 108.162.250.218 08:12, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Another thing to annoy grammar pedants is that it should always be "character is" or "characters are": consider a clearly plural character: "..., the most popular Star Trek characters are The Tribbles" versus "..., the most popular Star Trek character is The Tribbles" and cf the equivalent to the comic: "..., the most popular Star Trek character are The Tribbles". IMHO each of my quoted examples are more likely to be viewed correct than the next. Mark Hurd (talk) 01:07, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Yet nobody complains about "everybody/everyone is" International Space Station (talk) 02:35, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Compare "every person is" to "all people are." Every and all are both determiners, but they belong to different subclasses. Every enumerates over a group or class, as it is a distributive determiner like each, either, and neither. All indicates a quantity, as it is a quantifier like both, enough, and some. In "every person is X," every applies the statement to each element in the entire class to which person belongs (people); for each person in all people, the person is X. In "all people are X," all gives a size (the entire class) to the group or class that is the subject (people). 'Everybody' and 'everyone' evolved from "every body" and "every one," so the syntax used for the two-word form got applied to the pronouns. 108.162.237.137 12:57, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Is it just me, or does "ypercorrection" not make any sense as a pronounciation? 172.68.46.41 05:59, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

With the increasing prevalence of the use of singular "they" as a gender neutral pronoun on the internet and the use of prural forms together with it ("they are" used to refer to a single person of an unknown or nonbinary gender), referring to the android as "Data are" might be atually becoming somewhat correct... 141.101.96.40 20:00, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Nope; the grammatical usage of the pronoun is separate from the noun it refers to. If you saw someone whose gender you don't know wearing blue, would you say "that person are wearing blue"? There's no LGBT conspiracy to destroy the English language -- the people trying to make you refer to them by fae/fem pronouns instead of they/them are a very small minority. --Youforgotthisthing (talk) 18:01, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

a vs an with h

my mother once pointed out to me that the characters speak weirdly in star trek. They consistently use "an h..", even if they don't have an accent that would omit the h sound. I think the title text definitely refers to this, it's too specific not to 162.158.154.202 (talk) 18:02, 20 November 2023 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)