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🎁 A seasonal mistake
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'Tis the season for confusion about apostrophes. You've probably already seen it: a holiday card from "the Smith's" or "the Lee's," instead of the properly unpunctuated "Smiths" or "Lees." In the spirit of this common seasonal mistake, we're reviewing apostrophe use today. And we have another holiday-themed reminder. The apostrophe serves a few purposes in the English language. It's used for possessives: "Jane’s favorite punctuation." It's also used for omissions: "I've been using apostrophes well since '04." You also might add an apostrophe to limit confusion, such as in the phrase do's and don'ts. And you want to dot all your i's, not your is. That one showcases two apostrophe rules at once: You should use them to limit confusion and for the plurals of single letters: "He was conscious of the three R's: reduce, reuse, recycle." However, do not use them to make decades or acronyms (or your last name) plural: "The students in their 30s have the highest GPAs." So should your holiday card be free of apostrophes? Not if you're writing season's greetings. Before we sign off for the rest of 2024 (we'll be back in your inbox on January 3), we're excited to share that we're working on new features that we plan to unveil next year. If you're interested in getting a preview — and giving us feedback that will help these features meet your needs — please let us know below ⬇️
Happy holidays! ❤ Team Stylebot
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Hone your writing skills and never use "hone in" again. Get writing tips, have fun with words and learn something new in a one-minute read each week by signing up for Stylebot’s newsletter.
We're almost a week into the month of December, which means that you might have already cracked open a few days of your Advent calendar. The capital "A" version of the word refers to the period leading up to Christmas, which is why you should capitalize it. Usage of "Advent" goes back to at least the 12th century, while the lowercase advent, which essentially means "arrival," came into use in the 1700s. And yes, it evolved from the Christmas-themed "Advent." ❤ Team Stylebot Get a free...
It's the Friday before Thanksgiving, and with a holiday weekend coming up, we're revisiting one of our early newsletters that answers one of the most common questions we get when a long weekend looms: Is "weekend" capitalized? (And speaking of holiday weekends, we're taking next Friday off. We'll be back in your inbox on Friday, December 6.) Before we get to the writing tip, though, we want to say thank you to everyone who answered our question last week about "poor structure." If you didn't...
When you're poring over an article and you identify something that you think qualifies as "poor structure," what does that mean to you? If you filled out our quick survey about common writing and editing mistakes over the past few weeks, thank you! Your feedback is crucial to helping us improve and expand Stylebot's capabilities. Most of the responses to the survey identified "poor structure" as the most common editing problem. And we realize this is a bit awkward, but "poor structure" is a...