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Posts Tagged ‘apostrophes’

September 13th, 2011

20s, 20′s, or ’20s?

Numbers and apostrophes confuse many business writers. Here’s a sentence that correctly omits an apostrophe:

The study, led by Northwestern University researchers, followed a large group of men in their 20s.

It’s incorrect to add an apostrophe + -s to make a number plural (e.g., “in their 20’s”).

However, you do add an apostrophe before the number when you name a decade but leave out the century:

Our company was founded back in the ’20s.

In this case, the apostrophe takes the place of the missing numbers you’d type in “the 1920s.”

Remember that decades with apostrophes are just like the contractions can’t for cannot or isn’t for is not.

The apostrophe in “founded in the ’20s” stands for missing numbers, just as apostrophes in contractions stand for missing letters.

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Do you have an important document but not enough time to double-check your spelling and grammar? Just use Write It Well’s editing services to make sure your readers follow your ideas and respect your voice.

Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes two lessons on punctuation marks, including the apostrophe.

We’ve made all the book’s exercises available as a free download here to accompany the e-book, which is now available on Amazon.com!

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Punctuation, Writing Skills No Comments »

July 23rd, 2010

Preventing Typos in Revised Text

Here’s a technique for avoiding typos, and two illustrations of how errors can pop up in carelessly revised text.

The New York Times ran an online article and slideshow this week with two errors that probably came from careless text revisions:

1.

2.

– From Suzy Menkes’s “Conjuring Temples of Deep Desire” and the slideshow

“Peter Marino’s Creative Genius,” nytimes.com, retrieved July 23, 2010

Typo 1 has two periods. Someone probably selected one or more sentences to remove, but didn’t select the final period before hitting delete.

Typo 2 started because the Times uses an optional apostrophe for the plural of acronyms like HMO and LED. For the slide, someone must have inserted the cursor before the s in “LED’s” to type in the word “light” – incorrectly keeping the apostrophe. Plurals formed with incorrect apostrophes can seriously damage a writer’s credibility.

You can solve both problems by selecting your text carefully before you add words or hit delete. And careful proofreading is almost always a good investment of your time!

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For tips on sentence structure and apostrophes, see our updated book Professional Writing Skills: A Write It Well Guide.

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Just send us a document, noting any concerns or goals you have for it. We’ll copyedit a sample portion for free and return it within two days.

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Grammar No Comments »

June 15th, 2010

Twitter: Tips for Concise and Professional-Sounding Tweets

Twitter is a forum for individuals and companies to share short Web messages with a public audience. (See this page for a rundown of the site and its terminology, and this page for an overview of business tweeting.) The 140-character limit for Twitter posts simplifies some writing challenges, but that limit also creates some risks. If you could use some guidelines for how to maintain a professional tone for your tweets, read on.

No Twitter guidelines can be carved in stone. The site is still new to a lot of people, it hosts a very wide array of users, and it evolves quickly. But here are four ways you can project a more professional image on Twitter:
  1. Ask yourself if a tweet is the right format for your message
  2. Use active language and contractions to keep your tweets short
  3. Give your readers all the information they need
  4. Be casual, but come down on the side of standard English

1. Ask yourself if a tweet is the right format for your message. It’s crucial in all business writing to save your readers time. Concise writing is mandatory on Twitter, and some messages just don’t fit naturally within the site’s 140-character limit.

So step back if you find yourself struggling too hard to stay inside the character limit, or if what you have to say just doesn’t fit in that short a format. Instead, try turning your message into a blog post or a page on your website, and then post a tweet including a link and just stating your topic – e.g., “Check out http://bit.ly/AAAAAA for my thoughts on the experts’ panel on HTML5 at last week’s conference.”

2. Use active language and contractions to keep your tweets short. Twitter’s a casual place. Its informality makes it natural to use contractions like “they’re” and “it’s,” even if you’re writing about your business. An apostrophe saves you at least one space and one letter. (If you could use a refresher course on the its/it’s and they’re/their differences, see our book Professional Writing Skills: A Write It Well Guide.)

You can also save space in tweets by avoiding passive language – e.g., by tweeting “The committee will announce the winners tomorrow” rather than “An announcement of the winners will be made by the committee tomorrow.” With spaces and a period, that second statement has 70 characters. The first only has 49. The active language saves space, saves readers time, and also sounds more dynamic.

3. Give your readers all the information they need. Whether you’re writing a tweet or some text for your website, put yourself in your readers’ shoes and ask yourself if they’ll have enough context to follow your idea.

How much context is enough? That depends on your message and your audience. The important points are to remember that your tweets are visible to the public, and not to sacrifice clarity any time you whittle down your tweet to 140 characters.

4. Be casual, but come down on the side of standard English. The New York Times cautioned in an article in April that a “small but vocal subculture has emerged on Twitter of grammar and taste vigilantes who spend their time policing other people’s tweets – celebrities and nobodies alike.” These people target and publicize “tweets with typos or flawed grammar, or written in ALLCAPS.” So sloppy language in a tweet can be risky. And maintaining standard spelling and punctuation on Twitter can help you stand out in a good way.

Twitter works best when you balance careful writing and informality. It’s always fine to type an ampersand (&) instead of “and,” and someone breezing through Twitter may prefer “info” to the long word “information.” But it’s risky to use more nonstandard spellings. Some people have a pet peeve against the spelling “tomorrow nite” (while “tomorrow night” is only one character longer), and some readers will simply be confused if you tweet “I can’t w8!” instead of “I can’t wait!” The safest rule of thumb for tweeting is to balance standard English with a casual tone.

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If you’d like more information about Twitter, stay tuned! Later in June, we’ll post a free PDF on writeitwell.com with more tips on tweeting. We’ll include a list of exemplary tweets and resources. We’ll also explain how four different kinds of recommendations provide a handy structure for your tweets if you’d like to try Twitter, but aren’t sure what to say.

Our book Professional Writing Skills: A Write It Well Guide includes sections on determining your message, using concise language, using apostrophes and other punctuation correctly, and writing effective e-mail. Whether your format is 140 characters or 140 pages, our book can help you maintain a professional image for all your business writing.

Grammar, Writing Skills 3 Comments »

October 12th, 2009

Apostrophes, Dates, and Decades of Chocolate

“Why do some chocolates cost so much more than others?

“Although chocolate is an ‘affordable luxury’ in a general sense, some brands demand a king’s ransom.

“Much like coffee beans, cocoa beans are sold by commodity markets. The global price of chocolate spiked in the 1970s, after which it declined a little, only to recover somewhat in the early ‘90s. Prices have never reached the highs of the 1970s, but they have remained pretty constant since the 1990s.”

– Mary Goodbody, “Four Chocolate Questions Answered,”
The Daily Beast, September 29, 2009

Have you ever wondered how to use apostrophes to type dates? Forget about the apostrophe s. Mary Goodbody shows you how.

The Chicago Manual of Style uses an apostrophe when a date is spelled with two numerals, as in “the early ‘90s” or “the class of ‘99.” It’s exactly like the apostrophe for the omitted letter o in isn‘t. The apostrophe in those two dates stands for the omitted 19 in “the early 1990s” or “the class of 1999.”

Finally, it’s also correct Chicago style to spell out a decade as a word with no apostrophe at all: “the nineties.”

For more tips on how to use apostrophes correctly, see Write It Well’s book Professional Writing Skills: A Self-Paced Training Program.

Uncategorized No Comments »