WRITING IS AN ART #20

A SINGULAR PROBLEM

 

In the past couple of blogs, I’ve been talking about the importance of grammar.  Now, I don’t want to get into this in too much detail as there are plenty of good books on the subject. The main danger is that if you become too prescriptive, it can cramp your natural writing style. You need to maintain a sense of balance.

 

However, there is one subject that I would like to mention briefly. Many people seem unaware of when to use the singular or plural of a verb. This particularly applies to collective nouns. One of the tests of a good copywriter is how they deal with company names.

 

A company is a collective noun and therefore should be treated as singular. For instance, ‘Blogg Widgets IS a specialist component manufacturer’. Because the second part of the name is plural, most people would tend to write, ‘Blogg Widgets ARE a specialist component manufacturer’ (although the ‘a’ should be a clue that this is wrong!) 

 

In fact, I find that some businesses mix singular and plural in a way that makes them look ignorant: ‘Blogg Widgets are a specialist component manufacturer that uses the latest technology’. Aaarghh!

 

A similar principle applies to ‘team’ – another collective noun that should be treated as singular. The only exception is when you are writing more colloquially, when the rules can be bent more easily without giving offence. But more about that in my next blog….

 

Take care

 

 

Phil

 

Freelance copywriter

 

Web: http://www.phila

Email: info@phila.co.uk

 

 

WRITING IS AN ART #19

THE ANNOYING APOSTROPHE

 

Why ‘annoying’? Because so many people still get it wrong! I still see many examples of aberrant apostrophes – those that are wrongly inserted into plurals, or those that are incorrectly omitted.

 

Let’s get a couple of things straight. Apostrophes are used either to denote possession (the boy’s football) or missing letters (don’t). There is an exception (as always!) By now, most people know that “it’s” is only used as a shortened version of “it is”. For the possessive version (its hair stood on end), there is no apostrophe. I hope that’s cleared that up!

 

Stamp them out!

However, a much more common (and almost as annoying) mistake is the use of an apostrophe in plurals. Most people will have seen some appalling examples of this (e.g. “carrot’s sold here!”). However, many, many people still use an apostrophe in other less obvious plurals, such as the 1960’s. No no, no! (Am I getting carried away here? Perhaps I should be!) I suppose they think that there’s a missing letter, but there isn’t really.

 

For the record, it’s 1960s and 70s and 80s. Similarly, there is usually no apostrophe in the plural of abbreviations (therefore Dr becomes Drs; ASBO becomes ASBOs; TV becomes TVs). Ah, I feel better for getting that off my chest!

 

So, watch out for those apostrophes. Don’t let the little blighters creep in where they don’t belong!

 

All the best

 

Phil

 

Freelance copywriter

 

Web: http://www.phila

Email: info@phila.co.uk