----------------------------------------------------------------- THE BETTER WRITING SKILLS NEWSLETTER, May 2008 By Tim North of Scribe Consulting (http://www.scribe.com.au) http://www.BetterWritingSkills.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to the May 2008 Better Writing Skills newsletter. IN THIS ISSUE 1. Administrivia 2. What are those brackets for? 3. An alternative to "office timings"? 4. Should we say "the team is" or "the team are"? 5. Just for fun Your comments and questions are always welcome. Just send e-mail to: info@BetterWritingSkills.com Cheers, Tim North Perth, Western Australia ----------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Administrivia ----------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks to everyone who provided feedback during the month regarding the formatting of this newsletter. The issue of spaces being removed from the start of lines was not widespread. On the subject of formatting, a number of readers have suggested that I send the newsletter out as a PDF file. I've been tempted by the idea. I've held off, though, due to my belief that messages with attachments are more likely to be marked as spam by over-eager spam filters. It would also require readers to have a PDF-reading program like Acrobat Reader, and not everyone does. Still, it's an idea that I'll keep in mind. I shouldn't let the subject of typos go by either. I made a real clanger in last month's newsletter. Sigh. Every once and a while, I need to make a really basic error like not spell checking. It helps to keep me humble. :-) Cheers, Tim. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 2. What are those square brackets for? ----------------------------------------------------------------- My first correspondent this month, Jim, wrote in with the following question: I was wondering why in some articles you'll find brackets around random letters or words. Here is an example: However, a recent Education Department study gave [m]ost [states] poor grades for their efforts to ... The most common use of square brackets is to indicate an alteration of a quotation by an editor. For example: Malcolm [Fraser] and Gough [Whitlam] were both great mates of mine", he claimed. Here the editor of the sentence has inserted the surnames so that readers better understand the sentence. The added words have been put in square brackets so that readers understand that these words are not part of the original quotation but have been added later by an editor. Here's another example: The Anderson report stated that "no advise [sic] was received to the contrary". The Latin word "sic" (meaning "thus") has been used here to indicate that the error preceding it ("advice" is misspelled) is part of the original quotation, not a typo introduced by the editor. Traditional usage has always been to use square brackets for editorial insertions and comments. It is increasingly common to see round brackets used. Hope this helps. -- (c) 2008 Tim North: http://www.BetterWritingSkills.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- Do you know someone who'd like this newsletter? ----------------------------------------------------------------- Do you have a friend or colleague who'd find the Better Writing Skills newsletter interesting? If so, please feel free to send a copy of this issue to them. Alternatively, please tell them they can browse back issues here: http://www.BetterWritingSkills.com/newsletter.html Thanks for helping to make this newsletter so successful! ----------------------------------------------------------------- 3. An alternative to "office timings"? ----------------------------------------------------------------- My next correspondent this month, Prasad, has this to say: In India people use the word "timings" widely as in "office timings", "flight timings" and so on. Is this acceptable? My feeling is that it's acceptable if the people who hear and read it understand the intended meaning. A quick Google search for "office timings" revealed a modest 18,600 occurrences throughout the entire web. When this search was limited to India (the .in domain), it fell to only 523 occurrences. This leads me to suggest that the usage is not particularly widespread, in India or elsewhere. I suspect that most native speakers of English would use "office hours" as their preferred term. Google revealed 11.4 million occurrences of this phrase web-wide and over 47,000 occurrences in Indian domains. You may find this to be a preferable usage. Prasad went on to ask: Is there a good substitute for "flight timings?" I'd recommend "flight schedules". Hope this helps. -- (c) 2008 Tim North: http://www.BetterWritingSkills.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- 4. Should we say "the team is" or "the team are"? ----------------------------------------------------------------- My final correspondent for May, Elizabeth, wrote in to ask about a common source of confusion: I had a heated discussion recently about the use of plural or singular verbs when using group nouns. I think both can be correct, in context. For example: The team *IS* winning the point score (referring to the team as a whole) The team *ARE* showering after that heavy game (referring to the individual team members) Your comments? I think Elizabeth's position is a reasonable one. It's quite acceptable to use "is" when referring to the team as a whole and "are" to refer to the individual members. Other common words that can be treated in this way include "committee", "company", "family", "team" and "government". For example: My family IS united on this matter. My family ARE driving me wild! The first usage refers to family as a whole. The second refers to the individual members. Here's another example, this time from the web: The Go8 IS concerned that if ... Members of the Go8 ARE resource-rich and ... The first sentence seems to be referring to a committee (the Go8) as a whole, so it uses "is". The second is treating the members separately and so uses "are". It should be noted that the usage presented here is typical for American English. British English tends to use the plural form ("are") more often. There is no rule carved in stone, though, and usage varies greatly. Hope this helps. -- (c) 2008 Tim North: http://www.BetterWritingSkills.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- 5. Just for fun ----------------------------------------------------------------- This month have a look at Wikiquote: "a free online compendium of quotations from notable people and creative works in every language". http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Main_Page Enjoy. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Would you like more help with your writing? ----------------------------------------------------------------- On my Better Writing Skills web site, you'll find my range of jargon-free, downloadable e-books that will help you to become a better writer. These e-books will help you with business proposals, report writing, term papers, technical writing, grant writing, creative writing and more. http://www.BetterWritingSkills.com/ebooks.html ----------------------------------------------------------------- REPRODUCING THIS MATERIAL You are welcome to reproduce the articles that are copyrighted by Tim North, but please don't modify or sell them. 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