From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from relay7-d.mail.gandi.net (relay7-d.mail.gandi.net [217.70.183.200]) by mx.groups.io with SMTP id smtpd.web10.942.1626883907717680891 for ; Wed, 21 Jul 2021 09:11:48 -0700 Authentication-Results: mx.groups.io; dkim=missing; spf=pass (domain: bootlin.com, ip: 217.70.183.200, mailfrom: michael.opdenacker@bootlin.com) Received: (Authenticated sender: michael.opdenacker@bootlin.com) by relay7-d.mail.gandi.net (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 7CD8320006 for ; Wed, 21 Jul 2021 16:11:45 +0000 (UTC) To: YP docs mailing list From: "Michael Opdenacker" Subject: "metadata": plural or singular or both? Organization: Bootlin Message-ID: <8b294bc7-ab17-3dab-2cf6-ef2af316ca00@bootlin.com> Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2021 18:11:44 +0200 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/78.11.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Language: en-US Greetings, I'm currently reading BitBake's documentation, and I'm always uncomfortable when I read "Metadata is", while I know that in English and in Latin, "data" is the plural of "datum". However, many people seem to use "data" as singular. I also find confusing that actually "metadata" is both used: * in plural form as in: "Split metadata into layers and allow layers to enhance or override other layers." * in singular form as in: "Metadata is stored in recipe (|.bb|) and related recipe “append” (|.bbappend|) files" How do you feel about this? I'm especially interested in the feedback from native English speakers, which I'm not. Thank you in advance, Michael. -- Michael Opdenacker, Bootlin Embedded Linux and Kernel engineering https://bootlin.com