There’s a question that comes up among writers and editors a few times a year during a week like this one. This week, for example, it goes something like this: “Is ‘Presidents’ Day weekend’ capitalized?” When a three-day weekend is approaching, our team has noticed over the years that people need clarification about whether “weekend” is capitalized after the holiday name. It’s come up so often that all of our style guide entries covering holidays commonly associated with long weekends, such as Memorial Day and Thanksgiving, now address the question. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the answer about each holiday weekend is the same: You should not capitalize “weekend.” So check that off your list for all the holiday weekends this year and reserve your energy this weekend for worrying about apostrophe placement. Have a great Presidents’ Day weekend! ❤ Team Stylebot 💌 A tip a weekIf someone forwarded you this email, subscribe here to get one writing tip a week in your inbox. 💬 Get reliable, ethical writing advice at your fingertipsImproving your writing means making better choices every day. Stylebot makes it easy with our Slack, Teams and Google Chrome extensions. Try Stylebot for free today. 📝 About StylebotStylebot helps media professionals save time without sacrificing quality by answering editing questions on Slack, Microsoft Teams and Google Chrome. We're on a mission to make editing faster, easier and more fun ✨ Learn more about Stylebot or follow us Instagram, X or LinkedIn. |
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We don't have a handy "principal is your pal"-style trick this week to help you remember the difference between the homophones tenant and tenet, but it looks like most of you don't need the help. Nearly 80% of last week's quiz participants got it right. It's a fun little parallel that both "principle" and "tenet" mean "belief," while their homophones can both refer to people. ("Tenant," of course, is an occupant or dweller.) While "tenant" and "tenet" have different meanings now, each word's...
Maybe it's all the back-to-school activity, or maybe you learned the "principal is your pal" trick back in elementary school, but either way, you didn't seem to need much help with last week's quiz. The vast majority of you knew that the principal would announce a new cellphone policy on the first day of school: Would it have been as easy to fill in this blank, though? Their _____ concern is getting all the children there safely. While principle is only a noun, principal is a noun and an...
Most of you didn't fall for it in last week's quiz, but you might say "infamous" is infamous for being misused. Or it might just be famous. Either way, we were impressed with last week's quiz results, with more than 63% of you answering correctly: So if the words famous and infamous aren't interchangeable, what's the difference? "Famous" simply means widely known, while "infamous" means being known for something bad (aka, famous with a bad rap). However, a lot of people seem to use "infamous"...