When making acronyms, initial-isms or abbreviations plural, no apostrophe is required -- IRAs, RFPs, CDs, FAQs, NSAIDs. Note that these are all multi-letter names that are treated as nouns in every way, including in their plural form. The exception is when discussing multiple occurrences of a single letter of the alphabet, like so: "Mary's handwriting has improved; her e's are now distinct from her i's." This exception is important when you consider that the apostrophe makes it clear that it is a letter of the alphabet under consideration, and not the word, "is."
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This article from Ragan.com is well worth your time, but we think that the winning paragraph is this one right here: "There is a distinction between a conversational tone and sloppy writing. It's comparable to 'business casual' versus 'for heaven's sake, put some pants on!'" This point is particularly well taken when any organization is developing it's "house style," and the cues that it wishes to use regarding tone and voice in communications. Casual is great, when done well. When done well. Professional firms, especially, may tend to shy away from having such a tone, fearing the potential of sloppiness or simply an absence of "gravitas." The result can be formal and staid, and utterly non-differentiating. When executed with care and attention to detail, however, a casual or conversational tone can be a powerful tool in forging a connection with the audience. If the whole point is to get your message across, developing and implementing strategies that make the recipient open to receiving that message is one of the ways a company can set itself apart from its competitors. March, 2012: article content has since been put behind the paid "membership" wall. The primary point, however, is made above, even if the five details that illustrate it are now privileged information! While we are familiar with most of the 14 punctuation marks, some of their names came as new information, and a few were entirely Terra Incognita prior to this article! ¶ Enjoy! We had cause to wonder recently if people who pronounce that strong coffee drink as "expresso," also spell it that way.... They might not -- sometimes we do say things differently than we spell them (people and language both being complex!!) Either way, our advice is to try to be conscious of differences in what you hear from one person to another, and then investigate why those differences exist. You may just discover that something you thought was right isn't, and improve your own communication skills as a result! 10/5/2011 0 Comments Writing Tip: Writing NumbersA dear Write and Polish friend consulted us today as to the "rules" of numbers -- of writing them as words versus using the numerals. Our advice was:
The simplest guide is that numbers below 10 are written, and those 10 and above are in numerals. But there are many exceptions, for
8/17/2011 0 Comments Writing Tip: Towards v. TowardWe were plugging away a website page revision, and questioned the use of "towards" versus "toward."
Upon reviewing the convention on the use of one or the other, they are, basically, interchangeable. The former is somewhat more common in the UK, the latter in the US. But otherwise, they are equally correct! This site was shared with us by alert Facebook-er, faithful Write and Polish friend and fellow grammarista, Anne Gibson from The Sign Shop of Racine. If apostrophes give you palpitations, bookmark this page! 10/6/2009 2 Comments Writing Tip: The Multi-Talented Hyphen -- it slices, it dices, it makes julienne fries!It doesn't quite do all of that, but it is a busy little piece of punctuation.
The most basic function of the hyphen is to indicate linkage of two (or more) things that would otherwise be separated. Thus, its most common use is at the end of a wrap-around sentence, in which a word is broken between syllables. The hyphen also acts to group words that normally appear separately, but are being treated as a single entity. For example, fractions (one-third, four-fifths), compound adjectives (private-sector employment, the 22-year-old candidate) and many compound words that would otherwise join with identical letters (co-operate, re-emerge). One of the most common areas where confusion arises is when a word or phrase can be used one way without the hyphen, and another way with it. "Thank you" is a frequent example. To explain why requires a quick review of some basic parts of speech and what they do in a sentence. A sentence has to have a subject (generally stated, but in this case, sometimes implied) and a verb (action). It often has something that receives the action or that explains it further (object -- either direct, indirect or prepositional -- but that's more than you need to worry about right now!). When I write "thank you for your help," the implied subject is "I" -- the meaning is that "I" am doing the action of "thanking" and the recipient of that action is "you". "Thank" and "you" are doing very different jobs. But, if I want to explain that "I sent thank-you notes to the people who helped me," it's an entirely different situation. "I" am still the subject, the action is "sent". "Notes" is the thing that was sent, and by way of giving more information, the type of "note" has been described using an adjective, in this case two words that are behaving like just one, by way of our friend, the hyphen, that links them, "thank-you." Other examples: "the mayor was ill-at-ease," "I need to pull out that tooth" v. "the troop pull-out went without incident," "the first-time traveler" v. "the first time-traveler*," and "the book she read left her with that there's-something-under-the-bed-that's-about-to-grab-your-ankle feeling." One further application is the suspensive hyphen: when a series of similar phrases are used as adjectives, the suspensive hyphen allows the writer to eliminate repetition -- "the annual report included the one-, three-, five- and ten-year performance of the company's stock." * Courtesy of Business Grammar, Style & Usage by Alicia Abell, p.34 People who know grammar and do editing for fun and/or profit spend a lot of time telling you what you can't or shouldn't do when you write.
I am going to contradict one of those "rules," the one that says that you can't put a preposition at the end of a sentence. Now, for those of you not sure what a preposition is, it's a word that describes the relationship, often in time or space, between things or ideas: "the book is on the table". "On" is the preposition, as are "to," "for," "of," "by," "around," "beside," "with," etc. The idea that one cannot put a preposition at the end of a sentence comes from Latin, a language whose rules governing syntax (word order) are VERY different from those of English. However, to apply the Latin rule to English does a disservice to our own language. Certainly, the formality of writing is elevated when one "writes around" the preposition, which may be a desirable outcome. For instance, "he's the person I told you about" becomes "he's the person about whom I told you." However, it can also create awkward or unbalanced sentences, which are decidedly lacking in elegance, a point aptly illustrated in a quote attributed (probably apocryphally) to Sir Winston Churchill, asserting that "Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put!" P.S. (February, 2012): The fantastic web-zine, Slate.com, has created a language-related podcast they dub, Lexicon Valley. Lo and behold, this one addresses the origin of this grammar "rule" forbidding prepositions at the end of sentences. Listen and learn how this myth took shape. More homophones and homophone-like words that are frequently misused:
Pique as a verb, to irritate, "wound the pride of," or "arouse (curiosity, interest, etc.)"; as a noun, ill- feeling or resentment -- 'the rustling sound of the plastic bag piqued the kitten's interest.' The verb form of pique will always have an object that receives the action --> the subject is the plastic bag, the verb is pique, but the thought cannot culminate without describing WHAT was piqued, i.e., the kitten's interest. Peak as a verb, "reach the highest value," crest, top out, culminate; as a noun, it is the highest point or a projecting part of something larger -- 'the fever peaked in the night, breaking just before dawn.' In this case, though the sentence presents a time line of events, they are not necessary to express the complete thought contained in just the subject, the fever, and the verb, peaked. This verb requires no object. Roll is to rotate or move "by turning on an axis" -- 'the old saw about rolling with the punches is rarely comforting when the situation becomes difficult.' Role is a function, or an actor's part -- 'since I've been in this role, the department's revenues have doubled.' Peace of Mind is tranquility or mental calm -- 'he found that an organized desk imparted peace of mind when stress became too great.' Piece of [one's] Mind is a "sharp rebuke or lecture" -- 'the teacher was sorry for letting day's frustrations lead him to give an unlucky student a piece of his mind with little provocation.' (All quoted definitions are from The Oxford Desk Dictionary and Thesaurus (Second Edition)) |
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