Questions tagged [style-manuals]
For questions about style manuals. Style manuals are resources for writers that indicate precedents and recommend formatting consistency.
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When and why did American English begin to use different punctuation?
I was wondering when and why American English began to use different punctuation. On the web I find a lot of examples but no date or reason why. Any date/year or explanation as to why would be amazing....
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Where do commas go when interjecting within a list? [duplicate]
Where should commas go in a sentence like the following:
Consider the size quantity and most importantly price.
To address the elephant in the room, I side firmly with the oxford comma in most cases,...
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Is it unacceptable to start the second clause of a semicolon with a number?
I know it's generally frowned upon to start a sentence with a number encoded by Arabic numerals, e.g. "4 percent of people live in the USA". Is it okay to do this for the second clause ...
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When did Western newspapers stop using the term “Japs” in their publications?
There are countless examples of highly accredited publications like the New York Times that used the derogatory term “Japs” in their articles instead of “Japan/Japanese” during and after WWII.
When ...
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Change name of Latin regulations to italics and/or double quotes to conform to Chicago style?
Working on conforming to the Chicago Manual of Style an authorized new edition of book first published decades ago at OUP (New York). This passage was originally rendered as:
The architects of ...
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Hyphens are used in words from 0-99 (correction 21-99), but what if a number larger than 99 is a compound adjective before a noun?
For example, which of these are correct?
The pizza delivery service had three thousand, seven hundred and eighty-two clients.
The pizza delivery service had three-thousand-seven-hundred-and-eighty-...
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Trying to understand how to connect phrases/clauses with commas
Take this fragment for example:
The snow had come from the north, in the mist, driven by the night wind, smelling of the sea.
It is from John Le Carré's The Looking Glass War. I've seen writers do ...
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Square Feet versus Square Foot [duplicate]
The sentence is
The project would construct a 2000 square (foot/feet) kitchen.'
I put 'The project would construct a 2000 square feet kitchen.'
My senior reviewer changed feet to foot. Why?
If I ...
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Nested quotations & internal commas: an edge case
Which of the following would be best practice, and why and according to whom?
Alice says, “Bob said, ‘Hello’ ” and she smiles at the memory.
Alice says, “Bob said, ‘Hello’, ” and she smiles at the ...
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When writing ranges, must the start and the end of the range be both written out as words or both written in numerals? [duplicate]
Usually, numbers 0-10 are written out as words. What should be used when a range starts below ten but ends above it? Is the word "to" used, or a hyphen?
E.g.,
9-25
, or
nine to twenty-...
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Is objectual a word?
Is objectual a word? I could not find it in Merriam Webster.
I am trying to use it in a sentence like this:
A phrase signifies the objectual nature of thing in question.
Would I be stretching the ...
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Can I write ~€100 to denote an approximate amount of 100 euros? [closed]
I am currently using the expression “~€100” to symbolically denote an approximate amount of one hundred euros. However, I’m not sure whether the symbol ~ followed by the symbol € and the amount of ...
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How do you mark English words originally used by a non-native author in an English translation?
An artist has written memoirs in his native language with some English words and phrases scattered here and there (some might even have spelling / grammar mistakes). His memoirs are translated into ...
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APA style: Changing direct quote "drew" to "drawing" -- where to place square brackets? [closed]
If the original quote uses "drew" and I want to integrate it into my text by changing it to "drawing", which of the following would I write?
"dr[awing]"
Or
"[...
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Is the phrase "very delighted" ever "wrong"?
I was just browsing the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English and stumbled on this peculiar note under the entry for delighted:
Delighted is not used with ‘very’. You say:
I’m absolutely ...
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