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.
When on earth do I capitalize Earth?
We've written before abut how tricky capitalization can be, especially when a word or phrase is capitalized in some contexts and not in others. Such is the case with Earth, which is the proper name of our planet and a feature of many common phrases. Ahead of Earth Day tomorrow, here's what you need to know about capitalizing the place we all call home.
So just like you would capitalize Jupiter, you should capitalize Earth, but no need to capitalize it in common sayings. It's a little easier to remember the rules for sun and moon: They're never capitalized.
And if you are issuing reminders tomorrow about the three R's (reduce, reuse, recycle), remember the apostrophe.
Happy Earth Day!
❤ Team Stylebot
💌 A tip a week
If someone forwarded you this email, subscribe here to get one writing tip a week in your inbox.
💬 Need more tips?
Want to get writing tips like these on demand? Try Stylebot for free.
📝 About Stylebot
Stylebot helps media professionals save time without sacrificing quality by answering editing questions on Slack and Microsoft Teams. We're on a mission to make editing faster, easier and more fun ✨ Learn more about Stylebot or follow us on Twitter and Instagram.
Stylebot
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.
One fun thing about writing is that it's both rule-based and flexible. So sometimes, there are no wrong answers. Such is the case with last week's quiz, when we asked you about the plural of octopus. Your choices were octopi (the plural that assumes a Latin origin of the word), octopodes (the proper plural for a word of Greek origin) and octopuses (the English way to pluralize it). Most of you picked "octopi," and exactly zero people chose "octopodes": No one got it wrong, and even if someone...
Today is the longest day of the year, and we can't write much more about it without revealing the answer to last week's quiz, so let's get right to it. The quiz was part vocabulary, part capitalization. We asked you to fill in the blank in this sentence: "They’re planning a party on the _______ to mark the longest day of the year." First, you had to recognize that the event marking the start of both summer and winter is a solstice, not an equinox, which marks the start of spring and fall....
Happy Friday...the 13th. Most of you got the right answer on last week's quiz. Just as you spell out one through nine and use numerals for 10 and higher, you do the same for ordinals. So this month we have Friday the 13th, and next month we'll have July Fourth. You got a peek at our Google Docs extension last week, and this week we're excited to share another great review: "Style Guide Checker is a great product that provides a second set of eyes to catch things that often go overlooked. Not...