“…In their recent editorial, the new Editors of the journal were keen to confirm the rules for the use of the term data, insisting that it is a plural noun. 1 In support of the Editors, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED)-nominally the gold standard for the English language-advises that the use of data as a singular is, to use the inimitable OED style, 'catachrestic' (i.e., wrong). One might note, however, that in the same edition the OED expends, for example, nearly 30 column centimetres-and nine prior definitions-before allowing that the word gay may mean homosexual.…”