Tag: Punctuation

Flushing out the Oxford comma to clear the NHS backlog

In early September this year, the new UK Prime Mister, Liz Truss (remember her?) appointed Conservative MP Thérèse Coffey as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. Soon after, the press reported that Thérèse Coffey had sent staff in her new departmental fiefdom a strict manual on writing. I haven’t seen the writing manual…… Continue reading Flushing out the Oxford comma to clear the NHS backlog

Milkshake’s and apostrophes

Here’s another example of a sign that inserts an apostrophe in the plural of a word that doesn’t contain an apostrophe in standard English spelling. The word is milkshake’s, standardly written as milkshakes. I’ve written before about an intrusive (and normatively ‘incorrect’) apostrophe in the word milkshake. Panini’s apostrophes – Language Miscellany There, milkshake’s followed…… Continue reading Milkshake’s and apostrophes

Panini’s apostrophes

I have written before about what is sometimes called “grocer’s apostrophes” in English. https://languagemiscellany.com/2021/10/say-nein-to-anglo-saxon-punctuationHere is a good example I saw recently at a café in York. The apostrophe before the -s plural suffix on panini doesn’t surprise me. People often put in an apostrophe on a noun that is not a mainstream noun, for example…… Continue reading Panini’s apostrophes

Writing English to help second-language readers

I’ve spent much of the last 28 years writing or editing documents for a readership that includes many readers who didn’t learn English from birth. In this post, I give some tips on writing more clearly to help readers with English as a second language.  General advice on writing plain English is not enough to…… Continue reading Writing English to help second-language readers

In defence of brackets (2)

Here’s another case where brackets are clearer than commas. A sentence I saw recently said: We studied 693,111 tweets, by 13,102 users, that were geo-encoded in Croatia. That wording makes it unclear what geo-encoded modifies. Does it modify tweets or does it modify users? The intended meaning is 693,111 tweets that were geo-encoded… Using brackets…… Continue reading In defence of brackets (2)

Say “nein” to Anglo-saxon punctuation!

Seen on the way from Basel airport on 3 October 2013: “Alle Pizza’s werden geliefert.” English grocers are notorious for serving apostrophes with everything. But now the malady has spread to a language that doesn’t even have apostrophes. (German does use the apostrophe to show that a letter or sound has been omitted.)

In defence of brackets

Editors (both professional and amateur) have often warned me against using brackets. They are averse to brackets because they view brackets as a sign of indecisiveness and of an addiction to parenthetical digressions. They often suggest commas instead of brackets. Up to a point, their aversion is justified. Yet commas are sometimes less clear than…… Continue reading In defence of brackets