February 17, 2012|By June Casagrande
Article from Daily Pilot
Some people worry that high-tech communications are bringing down language standards.
In a Twitter-centric world where people write "some1" in place of "someone," these fears seem valid. But linguists beg to differ. Language, their work has demonstrated again and again, polices itself according a simple law: the need to be understood.
But another way of looking at these issues hit me recently while I was reading a real estate-related website: In an age when everyone's a "published writer," spelling, punctuation and grammar may be more important than ever.
Consider these sentences from the website: "It's no secret the foreclosure market is at an all time high." "The foreclosure process contains 3 stages." "Bank owned properties commonly called REO or real estate owned is one of the most common foreclosure investment practices today."
This website was trying hard to impress readers with its expertise and professionalism. And overall, the site wasn't badly written. It was well-organized, with some solid information. Yet these passages, like others on the site, contained subtle clues that the company wasn't as polished as they'd have readers believe.
Take, for example, the sentence reporting that the market "is at an all time high." Most people don't pay much attention to hyphenation rules, but I bet that many would sense something a little off here.
If you read enough, you develop a sort of sixth sense that tells you that most pros would have put a hyphen in "all-time." That's because punctuation rules say to use a hyphen to join two words that together modify a third word any time it can aid comprehension and readability.
That's a tiny matter, of course. But little things add up.
Here's another: "The foreclosure process contains 3 stages." This sentence is technically fine. But it deviates from professionally edited copy in one way: the numeral 3.
Professional publishing follows certain guidelines for writing numbers. The guidelines are somewhat arbitrary, and different rules apply to book publishing and for news media. Still, almost no professionally edited copy uses numerals for numbers less than 10, unless it's for an age or a measurement.
In news style, it's most common to write out numbers one through nine and use numerals thereafter until you get to some real biggies, like 2.5 million, in which it's customary to use numerals for the first part and the word "million" or "billion" for the second.
Article from Daily Pilot