The asterisk is one such feature. I use it in two contexts.

First, I use it to emphasise.

To quote Chandler in Friends, “could this *be* any more lame?” Underlining is now largely frowned upon given its use in hyperlinks; and bold is considered harsh. Italics has various other uses (see Friends earlier in this paragraph), and so the asterisks are a welcome addition.

I wouldn’t use them in an overly formal letter, but I regularly use them in relatively formal work-related emails. And I admit, part of me does so to invite question.

Second, I use it to indicate an action.

This one is used in online conversations to indicate what you’re doing, usually in a non-factual way. *puts kettle on* or *puts on loungin’ pants*. It’s used to evoke a sense of what you might be doing in response to some preceding comment in the conversation.

Oddly, even though it’s a reference to the first person, yourself, it’s always phrased without the subject, yet in the third person. A bit like Jimmy in Seinfeld.

I wouldn’t write this in work emails, except in an informal manner to people more savvy in Twitter and txtspk. In the main, I’d save this for a Facebook conversation or a Twitter retort.

There was question about which valediction should be paired with “To whom it may concern”. (Yours faithfully.) And then discussion turned to questions of format: where to put the date, how much space to leave before the sign-off name, how many spaces thereafter before any enclosures were listed etc.

My view is that in letters, most things are stylistic rather than formulaic. That is, how you structure things is your call. There are, however, a few things that are sacred.

• Your own address should either be part of the letterhead or should appear at the top, on the right-hand side
• The recipient’s name and address should appear on the left, either beneath the letterhead or lower on the page than your own address details. Basically, it should be positioned to hit the window of a DL envelope when the A4 page is folded into three, even if a different delivery mechanism is being used
• If there is a subject, this should appear directly beneath the salutation
• The valediction should be in keeping with the salutation. Dear Sir/Madam or To whom it may concern should be paired with a Yours faithfully. Letters to a named individual can be paired with anything.

To me, Yours sincerely is no longer necessary. A more friendly valediction can be used without causing offence. But Yours faithfully is still sacrosanct. I often simply use Sincerely, which softens the harshness of the traditional version, and puts emphasis on the sentiment (sincerity) rather than the formal construct.

Whether you put the date on the left or right is a decision of style, as is spacing.

There are the grammatical stalwarts, clinging to the apostrophe in their Men’s, Women’s and Children’s departments, no doubt seething at the lacking punctuation in Menswear and the like.

There are the grammatical heathens, with signs directing you to the Childrens’ Department or the Womens’ Toilets, but correctly to the Men’s Shoes. Inconsistency abounds.

And finally, there are the grammatical renegades. These are the ones that have actively shunned the awkward apostrophe that sits within departments’ signage, but that have done so consistently, resolutely and boldly.

Clarks is a good example of the latter. You won’t find a single apostrophe on their website. Their departments are Boys, Girls, Mens, Womens. It’s clear that they’ve made an active choice to shun it, possibly for SEO reasons, possibly for typographical beauty and neatness, likely a combination of the two.

And while it may grate at first, I have to respect them for the decision. The fact that it is an active decision makes it admirable. They know what they’re doing, and they know that it’s technically wrong, but they’re pushing forward regardless, on the basis that life without it will be easier than that with it. Just as Waterstone’s announced last week.

(The slight awkwardness comes when branding meets the written word. Their marketing emails talk of savings on men’s boots, with graphics advertising great savings on mens styles.)

Notwithstanding, as long as people know what they’re doing, I’m all for a bold move like this. It’s the grammatical heathens that you’ve got to worry about.

We have overtaken the car that/which was holding us up.

Either is fine. Traditionalists, and those over 60, will default to using which. But many style guides have moved to endorse that.

My preferred style is to use that. My loose rule: which follows a comma, that does not. Take the two sentences below.

We have overtaken the car that was holding us up.

We have overtaken the car, which was holding us up.

While the two sentences are pretty similar in their sense and meaning, there’s an important distinction. In the former, the car that was holding us up is, in its entirety, the object of the sentence, modified by what’s known as a restrictive clause. In the latter, the car is the object, a subsequent clause (called non-restrictive) giving some further information about its annoying slowness.

My view is that while the comma distinguishes between the two sentences, further distinguishing them by using opposing pronouns can do nothing but good.

You’re in luck, because here’s some advice for those looking for work in this arena, specifically with osirra: mistakes in your application are not an option.

You see, we operate in a line of work where we correct mistakes. We correct mistakes in the written word. So if we at osirra stumble upon a CV or a covering letter that contains mistakes, we aren’t going to look upon it too favourably. In fact, we’ll probably think that if you make mistakes like this in your application, there’s nothing to stop you allowing similar mistakes through in reviewing our clients’ work.

If you apply for a proof reading position, we’re likely to bin your application in favour of someone applying for a proofreading position. If your salutation is to Mr. Ossira, we’d much rather this was spelt with a solitary S and a couple of Rs, consistent with the logo at the top of our website. And if you sign that same application off with “Yours faithfully”, then please include your home address to allow us to hang, draw and quarter you.

If you were applying for a position as a bricklayer, then where/whether you put an apostrophe in the word “its” matters not one jot. (We’re not currently recruiting any bricklayers, by the way, but if that changes, you’ll be the first to know.)

But the people we work with are of a certain ilk. We have a passion for detail. We adore finding errant apostrophes; a customer compliant (where a complaint would be more logical); incorrectly-spelled hospital names in the Black Country; and even executives’ names spelt incorrectly, something that the writer should rightly know better than we do.

We’re passionate about content. We’re passionate about researching where we’re not quite sure. And we’re passionate about getting things right.

Don’t get me wrong: we all make mistakes. I’ve sent emails that I’ve looked back on months after the event that contain howling typos that scream at you when read cold. But here’s the important thing: I’ve never done so when applying for a proofreading position. Such applications are unique in their self-referential quality.

So please, before you submit your CV or hit send on a covering email, stop. Read it again. And again. Send it to a similar-minded friend to proofread on your behalf. And read it again. Make sure it’s absolutely watertight before it reaches us. Because anything less simply won’t do.

But there is one apostrophe use that always divides opinion and gets people debating, often vehemently. I have no idea what it’s called. But I know how to use it. Below is an example sentence.

Please can you give me two hundred pounds’ worth of dollars?

From the discussions I’ve had about it, most people will not use an apostrophe. Nor will they think one’s necessary when prompted. But the apostrophe is necessary, and not using one is, technically, grammatically incorrect.

For a moment, consider its singular equivalent.

Please can you give me a pound’s worth of gobstoppers?

Now apart from swapping dollars for gobstoppers, mainly to lighten the mood, the only change is reducing the two hundred to one.

In this latter example, I don’t think any semi-educated person in their right mind would think of leaving the apostrophe out. But by pluralising the amount, suddenly it becomes confusing.

This apostrophe will be the first to disappear as English changes and grammatical correctness becomes compromised with time. And eventually, likely in my lifetime, it will become grammatically incorrect to use one.

But there are certain things that I really can’t abide. Fortunately for you, my services will get rid of such things for you—as well as countless others. Below is a short list of the ones that drive me nuts:

• Inconsistent spacing between sentences. Sometimes one; sometimes two.
• Faux ellipses. Three full stops/periods (…) instead of the ellipsis symbol (…).
• Hyperlinks that underline a trailing space or punctuation mark as well as the words that form the link. (Note that if an entire sentence is being hyperlinked, the full stop/period at the end should be underlined.)
• Italicised words or phrases that also have the leading or trailing space italicised. It’s not obvious to a lay-reader, but it kills me.
• Inconsistent punctuation at the end of bullets.
• Redundant spaces at the end of paragraphs. Yes, I know they’re not harming anyone, but they are doing untold damage to my sanity.

Above are some of the reasons I’m a proofreader, and arguably no fun to be around.

Inquiries also continue over the disappearance of Susan Rushworth, 43, who also worked as a prostitute and was last seen near her home in the Manningham area of Bradford on 22 June last year.

In the latter half of the sentence, the carry-over of the who is unacceptable.  The two constructs—”worked” and “was last seen”—are sufficiently different from one another to necessitate a second “who”.  I’m not sure whether the issue lies in the verbs being different in nature, or whether it’s because their context is so very different, but a second “who” is needed before the “was”.  If it had instead read:

[…who also worked as a prostitute and attended Bradford University

…then that would have been perfectly fine.

The two instances of the word “also” also grate.  Faux pas most definitely intended.

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.

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.

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.

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).

Given the services we offer, I expect these latter emails to be flawless—if you can’t get your own, short emails right, then what confidence do I have that you can do the same for one of our clients?

I recently received such a request, consisting of six lines of content, together with a salutation and valediction.  Below were the errors I picked up:

• The Dear Sir/Madam did not come with a corresponding Yours faithfully.  Harsh in today’s less formal world, but a tradition that should be upheld, for the time being, at least.
• Proofreader was sometimes hyphenated, sometimes not.
• The Oxford comma was used in one instance, but not in another.
• The lady used quotation marks around words not warranting them, much like an annoying person might sign visually in a bar conversation.  E.g. “[you] would, naturally, take a ‘cut’”.
• A spaced, single hyphen had been used instead of an em dash before a separated clause.

I politely pointed out some of these issues to the lady, that she might be more successful in looking for other work.  She refuted many of them, the worst defence being that her keyboard didn’t do em dashes.  (Yes it does: ALT+0151.)

Now some of the issues I raised may sound pedantic.  But given the subject matter, pedantry is essential.  Our reputation is founded on attention to detail, picking up issues that our clients don’t spot but which their clients may smart at.

I’m not asking us to can our respective versions of English—British, American, Australian, Canadian etc. I’m instead suggesting that a new version of English is created that would, over time, supersede our respective versions, taking the loveliness from each and consolidating it into a single set of rules that people can abide by in certain media, predominantly the web at first.

And I’m not suggesting that any one of our beautiful set of idiosyncrasies overrules those of the other countries’. There are some beautiful American constructs; and some equally beautiful British ones. I’m sure the same is true of the other variants, although I’m less familiar with these.

To achieve the goal, I’m proposing we first brainstorm the inconsistencies. And then we bring together five leading literary luminaries representing each of the English variants to agree on which version is preferable, leaving aside their local bias.

The whole process would strengthen the language and bring closer the English-speaking world.

Thoughts?

Mum should of gone to Iceland.

I must stress that this is not the actual phrase they used.  They used more business-like phrases.  But you get the picture.

Speech has always influenced the development of written language.  But the world we now live in is made up of people whose English education is often, at best, questionable—people who, even if educated appropriately to suspect a mistake, have neither the time nor the inclination to search for the truth.  This means that mistakes like that above will become increasingly prevalent with time, which is a shame.

The correct construct is:

Mum should have gone to Iceland.

Or indeed:

Mum really shouldn’t have gone to Iceland.  Especially now that they’ve fired Kerry Katona.

The word that everyone was reaching for was tenet.  And although one person correctly used the word, his colleagues used tennent and tenor.

And their repeated use of the incorrect variants was such that I was forced to question my own confidence that tenet was indeed the correct variant.  It is.

Chrome’s Metropolis is expensive, and well worth the price if you live car-light and don’t use a rack and panniers or Xtracycle.

Most people would use the word but after the comma, signifying the high price as a weakness.  But, like the positioning of Stella Artois, the and positions the product’s high price in a positive light, alongside well worth the price.

A lovely little device.

And the interface does not allow for spell-checking.

The dreadfully constrained interface and the lack of a spell-checker make for out-of-office emails littered with typos and grammatical heathenry, an email that is sent to way more people than any other.  I would estimate that over half of those I receive contain at least one error.

Today’s examples:

• I am out of the office until Friday 22nd May and will limited access my emails during this time
• I am out of the office at a and will be back at work on the 26th May 2009

Please.  Copy your email into Word.  Read it, check it and double-check it before turning your out of office on.  Thank you.

The double-hyphen looks hideous, but it’s as if I should give them credit for trying.  How about trying a bit harder and typing ALT+0151 (on the number keypad, not the top row).  Or if you’re in WordPress (I am, don’t you know), hit the Insert Custom Character button sporting a Ω symbol, having hit the Show/Hide Kitchen Sink button).  The em dash can be found on the second row, fifth symbol from the right.

Here you’ll find more on the correct use of hyphens, en dashes and em dashes.