Letter from the editor

摘要

A number of years ago, I wrote a Letter From the Editor in Clinical Advances about certain too-, often encountered phrases that really annoyed my literary sensitivities, such as "at the end of the day" and "thinking out of the box." However, recently I have amused a number of colleagues with another of my editorial eccentricities. The present letter was prompted by an e-mail from Brad Kahl, who basically challenged me to write a letter on the appropriate usage of the word "data." We were collaborating on a manuscript, along with numerous other authors, and amongst my comments to a draft was to note the inappropriate use of the term "data" as a singular noun (eg, "the data is . . ."). My correction resulted in Henry Wagner circulating a url (http://www. guardian.co.ukews/datablog/2010/jul/16/data-plural-singular) that directed the rest of us to a blog in which a series of people with nothing better to do with their time were sparring about whether it was now appropriate to use the term as both singular and plural.