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From: mkw0@bunny.UUCP (Maurice Wong)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: "Data points"
Message-ID: <169@bunny.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 21-Aug-85 11:25:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: bunny.169
Posted: Wed Aug 21 11:25:18 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 24-Aug-85 19:07:16 EDT
References: <214@tekig4.UUCP> <330@faron.UUCP>
Organization: GTE Laboratories, Waltham, MA
Lines: 21

> 
> Data and datum are not adjectives.  Thus, it is either "a point of data,"
> or "a datum," not "a data point" [sic].
> 
> -- 
> 
>   William Ricker
>   wdr@faron.UUCP						(UUCP)
>   decvax!genrad!linus!faron!wdr					(UUCP)
>  {allegra,ihnp4,utzoo,philabs,uw-beaver}!linus!faron!wdr	(UUCP)
> 

The fact that "data" is a noun has nothing to do with whether "data
point" is grammatical.  There are thousands of noun-noun compounds in
the English language, such as "school bus", "speech data", etc. that are
perfectly ok.
-- 
Maurice Wong

ARPA or CSnet : wong%gte-labs.csnet@csnet-relay
UUCP: ...harvard!bunny!mkw0