Good with Numbers

Before you panic and click “close,” let me clarify that even though the title of this post is “Good with Numbers,” I’m not talking about math here. Sure, math teachers say there are “rational” numbers, but writers know all numbers are irrational, even when they are properly medicated. And what’s up with that Pythagorean Theorem?

Anyway, as journalism students and writers of any ilk can tell you, AP Style has a passel of rules about numbers, some rational and some not so much. I started wondering why the AP Stylistas listed the rules for using what some might call “numbers” under the headline “numerals.” Ask.com, my go-to-source for rational and irrational information, described the difference this way:

“A number is an idea or a concept in the mind that answers the question “How many?”

Though this concept “in the mind” was getting too cerebral for me already, I bravely trudged on:

 “A number is not viewable or tangible, whereas a numeral is a name or symbol that represents a number. A numeral, unlike a number, can be written down and seen and physically manipulated.”  

Okeydokey, then. Glad we cleared that up. Here’s a quick overview of the numeral/number rules that seem to give clients and others in my world the most trouble:

·        Spell out numbers from one to nine, but use figures for 10 and above

·        Always use figures for ages: The boy is 8 years old. Use hyphens if you use an age as an adjective before a noun: A 5-year-old boy.

·        When you use a numeral as a plural, don’t add an apostrophe (as if it is a possessive). So it should be: The woman is in her 50s (not her 50’s). The crash happened in the 1930s (not 1930’s).

·        Use figures for percent, and note that it’s not per cent (two words). 1 percent, 50 percent off, 2.5 percent, 14 to 15 percent (not 14-15 percent).

*The spell-checker is freaking out about okeydokey, but that’s what Merriam-Webster says, so I’m going with it anyway. Take that, you spell-checking robatoid! So, has anybody got any talk-back or sass-mouth for me about how to write with numbers/numerals?

Insert Title Here

No matter if you climb the corporate ladder high enough to get altitude sickness, The Associated Press (AP) Stylebook will only let you capitalize your big, impressive title if it’s immediately BEFORE your name, but not if it’s AFTER your name. As a copywriter who writes for all kinds of companies, I can attest that Corporate America, Sole Proprietorship America, LLC America and DBA America all have a real problem with this style guideline.

If you’ve lived at the office for upwards of 30 years, subsisting on PowerBars® and clawing your way to the top, you will never accept AP Style’s insistence on writing your title this way: “Frank Morgan, president of The Bank of Oz, joined the company as a mail room clerk.” When my copy comes back with the “p” on president capitalized, I usually just rearrange the sentence to read “Bank of Oz President Frank Morgan joined the company as a mail room clerk,” which is OK (never use “okay”) with the AP for some reason I have never figured out. 

The same is true for those who sit in state houses, rule Capitol Hill and run countries (note here the absence of the Oxford comma because AP Style does not like it). Even President Barack Obama loses his capital letter whenever a sentence reads “Barack Obama is the president.” Ditto for the pope. AP Style dictates that you write, “Tens of thousands of Harley-Davidson riders and their bikes descended on Rome to be blessed by Pope Francis, the current pope." Titles in academia are treated in similar roughshod fashion, i.e. “William Shakespeare, chairman of the English department, is the latest victim of budget cuts.”

What about “board of directors,” instead of Board of Directors?  Yeah, that will definitely never fly, even when pigs, possums and porcupines have wings. Am I right, writers?

"More Than" I Can Take

After perusing my recent “Less Is More, Or Is It Fewer” post, two astute MaliaMania readers had thought-provoking questions. Both of these guys are really smart, and one is a client who graciously supports the lifestyle to which I have become accustomed, so I decided I’d better come up with some good answers. 

Here’s question No. 1: Will your next post be about using “over” two rolls of toilet paper (TP) a day, versus “more than” two rolls?

My initial reaction was that if the reader has a “two-plus” roll TP habit, grammar and style issues are the least of his problems. Seriously, the question is referring to the fact that AP Style says “more than” is preferred with numbers, while “over” generally should be used with spatial elements. The AP Stylebook gives this example: The company has “more than” 25 employees, but the cow jumped “over” the moon. For those who are truly into this topic, i.e. your cable is out, Grammar Girl has a fun infographic explanation.

 Here’s question No. 2: How do I stand on the Oxford comma? My first thought was that this questioner was referring to some new buttoned-down men’s fashion garment. Then, I realized he was talking about what we journalism students at UNC always called the “serial comma,” most likely because we were still miffed we didn’t get into Oxford.

The Oxford comma, so named because it was traditionally favored by editors at Oxford University Press, is the comma before the word “and” at the end of a list. The  Oxford Dictionaries Blog gives this example:  “a thief, a liar, and a murderer.” Some people fervently argue it should be “a thief, a liar and a murderer” (no comma before the “and”). Allegedly, many U.S. book and magazine publishers are in favor of the Oxford comma, while newspapers are against it, but there’s some crisscrossing in both types of media.  How do I stand? I see both sides, but when push comes to shove, I am prone to slithering into the corner of whoever/whomever has hired me to do the writing in question. Busted!

Going Postal

In a time when people communicate by writing “BFFLNMW,“ when they mean “Best friends for life, no matter what” or “BISFLATM,” which apparently stands for “Boy, I sure feel like a turquoise monkey,”  what hope does a writer like me have of getting people to use AP Style state abbreviations instead of postal code abbreviations?

Unless you went to journalism school, right now you’re probably all like “Say what, grrl?” or even worse, “WTF!”

Postal code abbreviations are what the post office says you should use for state names in street addresses. So if you’re putting a street address in the “Contacts” section of your website, you use Big Barren Creek, TN, for example. But if you’re writing about Big Barren Creek in text or putting it in a dateline, you should use Big Barren Creek, Tenn.  But, wait, you say, “What does Dateline, that show that catches perverts and predators, have to do with it? And who uses the post office anyway? A street address is just that thingy I plug into my phone navigation.”

Point taken, dude. Just don’t let me catch you abbreviating our great nation as US (no periods), when it should be U.S.  -- unless you’re putting it in a headline. Say what, AP Style??

The Dictionary That Makes Me Blush

A fellow copywriter recently accused me of spending too much time with Mr. Roget, and suggested that I might find more creative inspiration in the Urban Dictionary. For the UD uninitiated, the online Urban Dictionary bills itself as “A veritable cornucopia of streetwise lingo, posted and defined by its readers.” It encouraged me to “Define your world” and claimed that ordinary people had contributed 7,108,705 definitions since 1999. Awesome. I just had to hook up with this treasure trove of reality TV-era wordplay. 

Things went well at first. I loved the June 26 “Word of the Day” entry, “Interpretive Dunce,” defined as “a person who has no skill at dancing, yet will try to auto-choreograph their unholy movements to the lyrics of the song being played.” (Credit: Ambad)  The July 1 entry was equally creative” “Greeting Orbit,” the place where you find yourself when you’re at a party with a friend who runs into people he/she knows, but doesn’t bring you into the conversation, “so you stand there smiling like a dummy, wondering if you’ll ever be introduced.” (Credit: elsquid). I could super relate, since I’ve spent most of my life in “Greeting Orbit” without knowing that’s where I naturally gravitated.

But on some days, the potty mouths gushed in and swept “streetwise lingo” straight toward the gutter and on into the storm sewer. I can assure you that nobody on my street, whether they are wise or otherwise, is that obsessed with bodily functions, secretions and excretions. If they were, they would never be smarmy enough to attest to it online.

So if you’re a writer with a PG sense of humor who ventures onto Urban Dictionary to be inspired by its wordplay, be prepared to bleep out some of the entries. Which brings me to the next question: Should "For Mature Audiences" be changed to read “For Immature Audiences”? http://www.urbandictionary.com

Space Cadet

One cold December day, in a galaxy not far away, an art director emailed me his Letter to Santa. “All I want for Christmas is a copywriter who consistently uses one space after the period between sentences.” 

Okay, Okay. I’m an idiot. My only excuse is that I learned to write on a typewriter back when you were supposed to tap, tap two bloody spaces at the end of a sentence. Then, out of nowhere, cyberspace reared its ugly head, and the keyboard became king. A fight broke out in my brain. When my right thumb would hit the space bar twice, my left hand would sometimes slap it. Often, my right hand would slap back harder, and two spaces would prevail over one. My copy turned into a mishmash of space baiting and spatial inequality, and the dog was visibly frightened by it all. 

Since that humbling holiday season, I’ve done my very best to put just one lonely space between every sentence -- happy, Randy? But I still can’t promise I won’t space out from time to time.  Curses, that last sentence had two spaces at the end. I can only hope that in my next life, space bars will serve drinks.

For more about monospaced fonts (which is apparently not a disease you get from kissing your keyboard), check out Grammar Girl.

Less Is More. Or Is It Fewer?

When I get picky about the nuances of words, some of my friends ask if my cable is out. Others question whether I'm off my meds. Hey, I'm a copywriter, people pay me to know this stuff. Okay, maybe they don't pay me to talk about it ad nauseum, but that hasn't stopped me yet.

Today's topic: less and fewer. My beloved AP Stylebook describes the distinction this way:

                   "In general, (I love it when they add a disclaimer right off the bat),
                   use fewer for individual items, less for bulk or quantity."

In other words, if you can count something, say rolls of toilet paper, use the word "fewer," as in "I really must start using fewer rolls of toilet paper." However if you talk about toilet paper in bulk, you would use the word "less," as in "I really must start using less toilet paper."

Now that you are more confused than ever, pick the correct answer from the choices below:

(a) Less than 10 people will read this stupid blog post.
(b) Fewer than 10 people will read this stupid blog post.
(c) Who cares?

The answer is (b), people are individuals you can count in this example, so you use fewer. Guess I'd better go see if the cable is back on.