We have encountered postal abbreviations for state names in narrative text quite frequently, of late. So, it seems time for a reminder that while there are a couple of legitimate options when referring in writing to one or more of the constituent parts of these United States of America, the USPS abbreviations are not among them. It's understandable how people can get into the habit of thinking of the state in which they live, and probably also the neighboring ones, to which they are prone to regularly address postal mail, in terms of the postal abbreviations. Though the addressing of mail using the postal abbreviations is ubiquitous, it is still a rare person who knows all fifty of them. When familiarity is not universal, use in text can leave a significant part of the audience wondering if AL refers to Alaska or Alabama. So, it is generally only correct to use a postal abbreviation as part of an actual address block (on an envelope, at the top of a letter, conveying a third-party's address in the body of a letter, anywhere when street/city/ZIP code are present, etc.) Our advice, for the sake of simplicity, is that within text or anything resembling traditional sentence structure, you should write out the name of the state. If you're just looking for a basic instruction, you can probably stop reading now and go about your day. ---------------------------------------------- ~ On the other hand, if you're interested in some of the qualifiers and digressions, continue: In the matter of postal abbreviations, different style manuals handle these things differently. The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) prescribes the advice that Write and Polish dispenses above. It is a clean and straightforward solution with nothing to look up or memorize. However, The Associated Press Stylebook (AP) has a set of abbreviations (and non-abbreviations) that it adopts for each state -- the so-called "traditional" abbreviations that pre-dated the postal system's two-letter designations. The majority of newspapers follow AP style, and these handles do clearly convey the necessary information. However, the traditional abbreviations follow no simple rule, like "three letters, first capitalized, ending with a period." They're each their own thing, including the eight that are never abbreviated! So, for the average person writing everyday business or personal material, to follow AP, you would need to refer to a list each time unless you'd learned them. Now, Write and Polish, being concerned about the aesthetic appearance of information on the printed (or rendered) page, writes the state name in its entirety in text AND IN ADDRESS BLOCKS. Though the postal system (their optical readers, actually) wants universal use of its two-letter codes, at present, our preference for what we find to be a more elegant look does not interfere with delivery. We will also admit, when dealing with our own materials, to a streak of obstinacy in the face of government-instituted homogenization! This W&P choice illustrates what is known as "house style." How material is presented can support, detract, or be neutral with reference to the brand and the organization's culture. A business or institution will often choose a major style manual to act as a "base" for its written material, and then supplement it with brand-specific requirements and other exceptions that constitute its own, hopefully distinct, style. House style should still be consistent with understanding, but allows for leeway in a variety of areas. For example, as of this writing, explicit direction to include or exclude the comma before the terminal conjunction in a simple series has become a "house" style point, as in: We color-coded our edits in red, blue, and green. or We color-coded our edits in red, blue and green. The first presentation was once de rigueur, but has largely gone by the wayside as unnecessary and redundant. For those who feel strongly about retaining that comma, however, spelling out the expectation in an internal style manual ensures that it is done consistently throughout the organization.
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An oft-encountered misuse of a word = "Myself" The Rule: never use "myself" if "me" leaves the meaning of the sentence the same. The Reason: used correctly, "myself" receives action that I do -- "I excused myself to take the phone call." So, if "I" am not already in the sentence, "myself" can't be there either. It can also be used to *emphasize* that I am the actor in a statement -- "Many people dislike black licorice. I, myself, adore it!" In this latter usage, "myself" can also precede "I," like so: "For myself, I don't need any other kind!" More: each pronoun has a reflexive version that pairs with it in the same constructions illustrated above -- you + yourself, he + himself, she + herself, we + ourselves, you + yourselves, they + themselves Does that clear things up? Grammar Monkeys offers this set of grammar myths, including several "well known" ones related to prepositions at the end of sentences, split infinitives, beginning sentences with conjunctions, passive voice and others.
Some great advice is offered. It will help your writing to incorporate it, we promise! Grammar Girl offers this great piece about irregardless, under the title Why You Can't Always Trust the Dictionary.
We at Write and Polish Central were perusing our Twitterfeed today (@WriteandPolish), and noticed followee @SimonPegg use the word "hangry," meaning the quality of being both hungry and angry at the same time (and, the latter *due to* the former). This word, formed out of parts of two others, and so taking on the meaning of both, has come to our attention several times in recent weeks. Mr. W&P has been fingered as one who is susceptible to this malady! The practice of morphing two words into a single new word is called, officially and, we believe, rather dully, as a "blend." We much prefer the more widely known descriptor, "portmanteau." Author Lewis Carroll coined the term in Through The Looking Glass, as Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice in "Jabberwocky," "Well, 'slithy' means 'lithe and slimy'. 'Lithe is the same word as 'active'. You see, it's like a portmanteau - there are two meanings packed into one word." Similar Carroll creations include 'chortle' (built from 'chuckle' and 'snort') and 'galumph' ('gallop' + 'triumph'). 'Portmanteau,' itself, is a portmanteau, from the French verb, to carry, 'porter' and noun, cloak, 'manteau.' While 'hangry' has yet to become an accepted word on its own, many other portmanteau words have done so: avionics (aviation + electronics), because (by + cause), brunch (breakfast + lunch), camcorder (camera + recorder), dumbfound (dumb + confound), email (electronic + mail), good-bye (God + be [with] + ye), hassle (haggle + tussle), infomercial (information + commercial), infotainment (information + entertainment), intercom (internal + communication), Internet (international + network), motorcade (motor + cavalcade), sitcom (situation + comedy), spork (spoon + fork)... anything + -verse...and on and on! As you can see, many, but far from all, of these words came into being as a result of technology. Or, more specifically, they were not all born out of the technology of the last 20-30 years. Technological innovation, whose result is generally new things and processes and ideas, usually means that new words must be created to deal with all that newness. Many will be created whole-cloth. But others will be born from combining two pre-existing terms. One can imagine the invention of 'motorcade,' dated by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) to 1913, in response to a technological evolution of nearly a century ago. A much newer iteration of the creation of portmanteau words is the blending of the names of individuals (celebrities or fictional characters, usually) into a single proper name that refers to the couple as a single entity -- Bennifer (Ben [Affleck] + Jennifer [Lopez]), Brangelina (Brad [Pitt] + Angelina [Jolie]), Skate (Lost's Sawyer + Kate) or Lilden (Lily + Holden from As The World Turns). Holiday punctuation 9-1-1 received today: Oh, Guru of Grammar, I'm writing our holiday cards and I'm stumped. Should I use dashes or commas? "We've had a rockin'-awesome-crazy-wonderful-fantabulous-extraordinary-superb kind of year."
The answer in this example is to use commas. The dashes join a string of words or a whole phrase into a single word, for syntax/punctuation purposes. But you're just using a lot of modifiers as themselves...a string of modifiers. So, separate them with commas! The example I like to use is: She got that creepy, shivery, something's-under-the-bed feeling.... See how you have an example of both adjectives separated by commas and another set of words connected by hyphens to behave like another adjective in the list? Note: Adjective = a word that describes (or modifies) a thing Write and Polish is an avid follower of such Tweeters as @apstylebook, who recently reminded us to "use Dow Jones industrial average on first reference in stories. Use the Dow in subsequent references. #APStyle"
This directive is not just for the DJIA...it's an example of a first mention style differing from subsequent mentions. Initially, always give the most formal and complete reference to the person/company/institution that you will be discussing: His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI or Louisiana State University or the Department of Justice. Thereafter, you may refer to your subject in less detail, assuming that you audience remembers to what you are referring: the Pontiff or Pope Benedict, or Louisiana or LSU, or Justice or DOJ. If the entity is sufficiently well known by its abbreviation (FBI or MRI), you can safely use it in the initial mention without introduction. With most abbreviations, however, you will wish to inform your audience how you will be simplifying thereafter, like so: "The spokesman for Students Against Standardized Testing (SAST) stated.... Formed last May, SAST operates on the premise that...." Expanding upon Tuesday's Tip of the Day, re-tweeted from @apstylebook: Use Dow Jones industrial average on first reference in stories. Use the Dow in subsequent references. #APStyle
================== This directive is not just for the DJIA...it's an example of a first mention style differing from subsequent mentions. Initially, always give the most formal and complete reference to the person/company/institution that you will be discussing: His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI or Louisiana State University or the Department of Justice. Thereafter, you may refer to your subject in less detail, assuming that you audience remembers to what you are referring: the Pontiff or Pope Benedict, or Louisiana or LSU, or Justice or DOJ. With one of those very well-known short abbreviations (LSU), you can safely use it without introduction as part of the initial mention. With most abbreviations, you will wish to inform your audience how you will be simplifying thereafter, like so: 'The spokesman for Students Against Standardized Testing (SAST) stated.... Formed last May, SAST works on the premise that....' 11/14/2011 0 Comments Writing Tip: Then v. ThanA friend of Write and Polish asked us to clarify when to use "then" and when to use "than."
Then = a description of time (sequence or consequence): "Walk six blocks, then turn left on Main...." Than = a comparison: "We like chocolate more than vanilla." The trick, then, is to keep a's and e's together! |
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March 2015
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