The English Language 101…
I mentioned the other day in one of my other blogs about some common mistakes that people make when it comes to writing, not through the occasional spelling mistake or unintentional oversight (which I’m sure abound here!), but just through plain ignorance.
- When mentioning abbreviated decades, remember that the apostrophe is used in place of letters that have been omitted. Someone born in 1945 was born in the ’40s and someone who is 45 years old is in their 40s. Putting an apostrophe between the number and the s is incorrect.
- The word self is always hyphenated when used in a compound adjective. For instance, a person can be self-assured, and you can attend a class on self-motivation. The world all is also similarly typically hyphenated, as in all-powerful genie.
- An adverb (almost always indicated by a word ending in ly) is never hyphenated. A fairly honest person rarely tells lies.
- Compound adjectives with full or well are hyphenated before the noun and open after the noun. Several of the examples above are included in a full-length mirror shows the full length of either a well-dressed women or a poorly dressed man.
- Unless used as scientific measurements, spell out whole numbers that are twelve or less and use numerals for numbers greater than twelve. There are exceptions. When the numbers occur at the beginning of a sentence you are supposed to spell them out, but since I can not often tolerate seeing numbers spelled out like ninety-nine at the beginning of a sentence, I rearrange the sentence structure so that the number can be written with numerals. Also, thickly clustered numbers should be written with all numerals to avoid confusion, as in my neopets are 6, 12, 97, and 165 days old.
- Multiple compound adjectives can be split, resulting in leading or trailing hyphens. Arnold Schwarzenegger is usually a well-dressed and -mannered man when he attends the Oscars, but wears shorts and T-shirts while on two- and three-week-long vacations in Bermuda.
I could go on for hours and hours…
those are stupid rules that I will probably never follow. haha posting comments is fun, except for our argument about neopets. My head hurts after I get done typing there.
As part of this debate we could also discuss if the American version of English has moved far enough away from the “English” version of English that it now be called “American”? Or is it still sufficient to say American English? If so when will the time come that the two *are* far enough apart to be considered different languages, if that will ever happen at all? My girlfriend is American and I am English and there are still times when we say things and confuse each other with our different use of the language. I could go on to list the differences…but its time to go home and its been a long day