hygienic errata, et cetera

Call me Neologist-Come-Lately (not Ishmael), but I am just learning a term dating back to 2001 or earlier:

data hygiene

I learned of a former colleague, now apparently very successful in a mercantile pursuit, who declares that she is "passionate about data hygiene and consistency."

Although you will charge me with non-data-related snickering (NDRS), I myself declare my affection for the term data hygiene. (I'm too lazy to care whether it should be italics or quotes or neither.)

Data hygiene is a bright and shiny, if slightly self-important, neologism. Apparently data hygiene refers to updating names and addresses of databases used for direct-mail.

Why, of course!

I'm sure it has branched out metaphorically into other meanings, its tendrils of connotation creeping like a verbal vine. (Stop vining! It's like kvetching!) (Who'd be interested in data hygiene? Well, accountants, bankers, the CIA, political spinmeisters, and pornographers, who would more likely lean toward unhygienic, or dirty data [UODD].)

Like me, this former colleague is a former copy editor, so who better for scrubbing data?

You might say that editors are verbal hygienists. Or hygienic redactors. Logocentric hygienists. Syntactical parers.

Mark Murphy said, "I myself brush my megabytes three times a day."

This a good one for Wordie.

Words. We'd be almost speechless without them. Or at least at a loss for words.