The Century Handbook of Writing Part 46

=d. Words taken out of their context and made the subject of discussion are italicized or placed in quotation marks.=

Right: _So_ is a word faded and colorless from constant use.

Right: The _t_ in the word _often_ is not p.r.o.nounced.

=e. A word or pa.s.sage requiring great emphasis is italicized.= This device should not be used to excess. The proper way to secure emphasis is to have good ideas, and to use emphatic sentence structure in expressing them.

Exercise:

1. In Vanity Fair Thackeray heads one chapter How to Live Well on Nothing a Year.

2. Auf wiedersehen was his parting word. He had informed me, sub rosa of course, that he was going to Bremen.

3. The battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac revolutionized naval warfare. How far back it seems to the days when Decatur set fire to the old Philadelphia!

4. Her They say's are as plenteous as rabbits in Australia.

5. A writer in the Century Magazine says the public may know better than an author what the t.i.tle of his book should be.

d.i.c.kens, for example, called one of his works The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.

=Abbreviations=

=83a. In ordinary writing avoid abbreviations. The following, however, are always correct: Mr., Messrs., Dr., or St. (Saint), before proper names; B. C. or A. D., when necessary to avoid confusion, after a date; and No. or $ when followed by numerals.=

In ordinary writing spell out

All t.i.tles, except those listed above.

Names of months, states, countries.

Christian names, unless initials are used instead.

Names of weights and measures, except in statistics.

Street, Avenue, Road, Railroad, Park, Fort, Mountain, Company, Brothers, Manufacturing, etc.

In ordinary writing, instead of _&_ write _and_; for _viz._ write _namely_; for _i. e._, write _that is_; for _e. g._ write _for example_; for _a. m._ and _p. m._ write _in the morning_, _this afternoon_, _tomorrow evening_, _Sat.u.r.day night_. Do not use _etc._ (_et cetera_) when it can be avoided.

=b. In business correspondence, technical writing, tabulations, footnotes, and bibliographies, or wherever brevity is essential, other abbreviations may be used.= Even here, short words should not be abbreviated: Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Ohio, Samoa, Utah, March, April, May, June, July.

Exercise:

1. Mr. Gregg & Dr. Appleton were rivals.

2. Harris lacked but one of having a grade of one hundred; _i.

e._, he had the two O's already.

3. His inheritance tax was three thousand $. In Apr. he moved from Portland, Me., to Sandusky, O.

4. Prof. Kellogg came down Beech St. at a quarter before eight every a. m.

5. A No. of old friends visited them on special occasions; _e.

g._, on their wedding anniversaries.

=Numbers=

=84a. It is customary to use figures for dates, for the street numbers in addresses, for reference to the pages of a book, and for statistics.=

Right: June 16, 1920. 804 Chalmers Street. See Chapter 4, especially page 79.

Note.--It is desirable not to write _st_, _nd_, or _th_ after the day of the month if the year is designated also. Right: March 3, 1919 (not March 3rd, 1919).

=b. Figures are used for numbers which cannot be expressed in a few words. The dollar sign and figures are used with complicated sums of money.=

Right: The farm comprised 3260 acres. The population of Kansas City, Missouri, was 248,381 in 1910. He earned $437 while attending school.

The cost of the improvement was $1,940.25.

=c. In other instances than those specified in _a_ and _b_ numbers as a rule should be written out.= (This rule applies to numbers and to sums of money which can be expressed in a few words, to sums of money less than one dollar, and to ages and time of day.)

Right: The box weighs two hundred pounds. Xerxes had an army of three million men. I enclose seventy-five cents. He owed twelve hundred dollars. Grandfather Toland is eighty-seven years old. The train is due at a quarter past three.

Exercise:

1. For 70 pounds of excess baggage I had to pay $1.00.

2. At 2 o'clock Rice gave him the 2nd capsule.

3. The letter was sent from twenty-one Warner St. November the eleventh, nineteen hundred and eighteen.

4. Knox earned $5 a day he said; but they paid him only $0.75.

5. At 40 he owned a 2,000 acre farm and had an income of $10,000 a year.

=Syllabication=

=85a. When a word is broken at the end of a line, use a hyphen there. Do not place a hyphen at the beginning of the second line.=

=b. Words are divided only between syllables:= _depart-ment_, _dis-charge_, _ab-surd_, _univer-sity_, _pro-fessor_ (not _depa-rtment_, _disc-harge_, _abs-urd_, _unive-rsity_, _prof-essor_).

=c. Monosyllabic words are never divided:= _which_, _through_, _dipped_, _speak_ (not _wh-ich_, _thr-ough_, _dip-ped_, _spe-ak_).

=d. A consonant at the junction of two syllables usually goes with the second:= _recipro-cate_, _ordi-nance_, _inti-mate_ (not _reciproc-ate_, _ordin-ance_, _intim-ate_). Sometimes two consonants are equivalent to a single letter: _falli-ble_, _photo-graph_ (not _fallib-le_, _photog-raph_).

=e. Two or more consonants at the junction of syllables are themselves divided:= _en-ter-prise_, _com-mis-sary_, _in-car-nate_ (not _ent-erpr-ise_, _comm-iss-ary_, _inc-arn-ate_).