Such was the title of a recent marketing email to a friend. Now it’s either part of a Latin declension (popdoma, popdomas, popdomat, popdomamus, popdomatis, popdomant) or a heinous typo. I favour the latter, as the Mediterraneans weren’t big curry fans back then.
On a related note, I genuinely believe there’s money to be made in the proofreading of takeaway and restaurant menus. High volume, low margin—but there’s certainly a market there to be tapped.
The Natural History Museum has followed Expedia’s bad example in their use of the dash to indicate date ranges. Remember, kids: en dash for ranges, unless the latter date is not yet fixed (e.g. for living people), in which case use an em dash.
When you search for flights on expedia.co.uk and click search, you are presented with a holding screen, informing you that:
Expedia.co.uk is searching for
flights on selected travel dates:
Mon 23/11/2009 — Fri 27/11/2009
(Obviously the dates in question are those pertinent to your requested jaunt rather than mine.)
The em dash (—) between the dates should be an en dash (–), and there shouldn’t be any spaces.
It’s only a tiny point, but on a screen that all flight-bookers will see, they should really get it right.
I embrace the evolution of the English language. But I think that its rules and regulations differ from one medium to another. Certain contractions (e.g. OMG, FTW, WTF, gotta) are acceptable in instant messenger conversations and text messages, but shouldn’t be used in more formal forms of communication.
But if you’re going to use such contractions, use them properly. Gotta is a contraction of got to; it’s not a contraction of got a. And so it should be used.
“I gotta go to the toilet” is fine.
“I Gotta Feeling” is not, Black Eyed Peas.
That said, it didn’t seem to bother Joe Public, as it was the biggest selling track out of the first one billion downloaded from iTunes. And I bought it, in spite of my grammatical disappointment.
I use colons, as opposed to periods, to separate time units. Periods are the same as decimal points, which can cause confusion. Periods should be used after the number of seconds to indicate the decimals thereafter.
The couple met at 9:30am.
He went to bed at 11:45pm.
Schumacher’s 1:34.236 was the best lap time of the practice session.
He ran the marathon in 3:25:23.
As well as avoiding confusion, the above style is somewhat quaint.
Update: when working in business, the 24-hour clock should be used exclusively, with no separator between the hours and the minutes. (Thanks to Paul Clarke for highlighting this clarification.)
The meeting will take place at 1330 GMT (0830 EST).