Frigid winter temperatures have punished much of the United States this winter. For grammar enthusiasts, weather reports have drawn attention to when to use an apostrophe with numbers.
These guidelines will help you decide.
A Ruthless Editor blog follower noted that babysitting, which first appeared in the U.S. lexicon in 1937, is generally expressed as one word.
Yet she finds pet sitting and house sitting often expressed as two words, and in some cases they are hyphenated. Which are correct: pet sit / pet-sit / petsit or house sit / house-sit / housesit?
As I did the research, it occurred to me that some might consider this issue trivial in terms of grammar. On the other hand, these words could readily arise in news writing, fiction or blogging.
Here are some reliable sources and how they present all three: baby sit, pet sit and house sit: Continue
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“We’re judged by the way we write and speak,” I often say.
Jeff Rubin, who founded National Punctuation Day in 2004, agrees:
“People judge us by the way we present ourselves — how we act, how we look, how we speak and how we write. When we are professional in all of these areas, we get our feet in the door for our choice of college, scholarship, job, promotion or business deal. If you’re unprofessional in any of these areas, it can cost you.”
As National Punctuation Day approaches — Monday, Sept. 24 — I’m sharing what I’ve found online about which punctuation mark is misused most often. Continue
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Are there still Valley Girls in Southern California?
If so, and if they happen to read this blog, I apologize for any feelings I might hurt.
My message is about the still-pervasive, irritating, distracting use of like long beyond the time and far beyond the geography from which it originated. Continue
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Bullet points help readers scan what you’ve written, quickly drawing attention to key issues and facts. They can tell readers what needs to be done, provide step-by-step instructions, highlight important elements, or list features.
Bullets can be round, square, triangular, diamond, or even customized or whimsical graphics. When listing steps to take, numbers can serve as bullet points to emphasize the correct sequence.
There are no fixed rules of grammar about how to use bullet points, but here are some guidelines. Continue
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In the typewriter age, titles were set off with quotation marks or underlining:
“Charlotte’s Web”
To Kill a Mockingbird
Underlining seems ancient today. Typographer and design expert Robin Williams puts it this way:
“Never underline. Underlining is for typewriters.”
How, then, should you denote book, magazine, movie and song titles, CDs and works of art, poems and websites? What about book chapters, magazine articles, speeches and statues? Style guides differ, but here are general guidelines. Continue
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A recent email from an aspiring author had two spaces at the end of each sentence. Among the suggestions I gave her about publishing was to change the double spaces to single spaces throughout her manuscript. (Microsoft Word makes this easy with the FIND and REPLACE function under the toolbar’s Edit choice.)
Seeing two spaces after a period or other closing punctuation can hint at a writer’s age. If you learned keyboarding on a computer, you most likely learned that one space at the end of a sentence is the rule. If you learned keystrokes on a typewriter, you might be dating yourself by continuing the double-space habit. Continue
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Today is a holiday in the U.S. — The Fourth of July (Independence Day) — so many of you probably are not in your office or at your computer.
But my email list is not limited to U.S. residents, so I went to my latest collection of headlines to develop a post for those of you who are toiling through this American holiday.
The controversy rages on … or does it limp along?
What’s it going to be: The Oxford comma … or not?
Since college journalism classes, I have followed the guidelines of the Associated Press Stylebook. AP instructs there should be just one comma in a simple series of three:
The flag of the United States of America is red, white and blue.
However, those who prefer the Oxford (or serial) comma would write it as:
The flag of the United States of America is red, white, and blue.
Although I preach consistency, using AP style creates inconsistency when it notes that a second comma may be added in some circumstances to improve clarity.
Of late, I’ve found myself gradually leaning toward Oxford style, but I retain the right to use AP when I choose — a choice that depends on the client and the document or project.
You have a choice as well. I like this summary that appeared on DailyWritingTips.com, which I have permission to repost here. Continue
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We all recognize the slash (/) as an integral part of a URL, the Uniform Resource Locater affiliated with website addresses: http://www.RuthlessEditor.com
The slash has other useful applications in personal and business writing, and it has other names: solidus, slant, diagonal, virgule, forward slash, front slash, oblique stroke, shill.
The slash generally does not require a space on either side of it. (Exception: when used to show separate lines of poetry, songs or plays.*)
Here’s how and where to use the slash appropriately. Continue
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