Pain in the English » Punctuation and Mechanics

Plural of Yes

Barnes — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:30:54 +0000

How do I correctly write YES as a plural. Example: # of Yes’s.

Oh it’s… “Free”?

Devin D. — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 21:47:04 +0000

While on vacation during the first week of summer, I came across an advertisement for the H1N1 Vaccine on the back of a coach bus. It stated “Get your ‘free’ H1N1 vaccine today!”

This begs the question, does putting quotation marks around “Free” (but not as a quotation, of course) serve any function or purpose? Such as:

All these hot dogs are “free”.

why does english have capital letters?

sunil kumar — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 03:48:24 +0000

i wonder why english has capital letters? as a non native english speaker, i could not understand the logic behind it. it also increases key strokes on typewriters, computers, and makes it difficult for non natives. i am sure that if puritans of english would be mild, it could be reduced.

similarly i find the use of THE very problematic. why it cant be reduced to a minimum?

Adding a question mark to ensure a response

Fred — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:58:46 +0000

I am in media relations and sent a story pitch to an editor telling him I could send him more information if he was interested and added a question mark to ensure some kind of response, e.g.,

I can send you more information if you are interested?

Is this grammatically incorrect? I just like doing this because it’s not as forceful as Are you interested?

p. v. pp.

juttin — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 04:15:31 +0000

Why is “page” abbreviated “p” while “pages” is “pp”? Of somewhat less interest to me, I also wonder whether “p” or “p.” is the correct notation?

Heaven or heaven?

Andy — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 02:52:25 +0000

Talking about the concept of the afterlife in Catholicism, would you capitalize Heaven? Moreover, what about Hell?

Is Punctuation Part of “Mechanics”?

dyske — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 01:23:46 +0000

According to my research, punctuation is part of “mechanics”. If so, is it redundant to say, “punctuation and mechanics”?

I do see many instances of people using “punctuation and mechanics”. For instance, I came across an article written by an English professor entitled “Common Mistakes of English Grammar, Mechanics, and Punctuation”. If punctuation is indeed part of mechanics, then this title itself would be a mistake ironically.

Capitalization of dog breeds

Jenn — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:03:27 +0000

When referring to “French” and “English” bulldogs, the geographic part of the breed will always be capitalized. What are the rules about capitalizing the stand alone word “bulldog?”

From what I understand, AKC dropped the requirement to use “English” in front of the word “bulldog” (or so I’ve been told….) so I am left with the word “bulldog.”

Should I capitalize or not? I referred to the AKC site to see how they were handling the capitalization and they begin by capitalizing the word then use a non-capitalized version throughout their article.

Thoughts?

Someone else’s

dyske — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 13:40:14 +0000

Is “someone else’s” grammatically correct? Every time I type, the spell-checker reminds me that it’s wrong.

There are a lot of discussions online about “passers-by” vs. “passer-bys”. The general consensus, from what I saw, is that the former is more correct. If this is true, shouldn’t it be “someone’s else”?

I personally feel that “passer-bys” is more correct, especially when you remove the hyphen (“passerbys”). It’s more consistent with other words like “blastoffs” and “playoffs”.

Dashes when saying year-olds

Brie — Sat, 02 May 2009 13:17:51 +0000

I have a question about when to use hyphens. For example, do I have a five-year-old dog or a five year-old dog?