I didn't now this was such an "epidemic."

Question for the nerds.

In math books and probably other sciences, it's normal for a legend whose name ends with s to just get an apostrophe for his theorem. I don't think I've ever seen Bayes's theorem in print, for example.

When you guys are writing this stuff where the norm is to be incorrect, what do you do?

I thought simply adding an apostrophe to names ending in S was okay too. In fact, it's what I usually do because the other way looks clumsy imo.

I was taught to spell out all numbers twelve and lower, and to type out numbers 13 and higher.

Actually, although it was probably one score ago, I actually remember the teacher discussing whether or not using ten, or twelve was the more acceptable cut-off point. I remember we settled on twelve, and so I've been spelling out twelve and lower since.

It also seems to me that I see the word "twelve" much moreso than "12" in text.

Anyone agree with this observation? I'm not saying it's right, but I seem to see "eleven" and "twelve" written out much more than the shortcut.

Pretty sure this was gone over with Jesus' car and all that earlier in the thread.

The bold is the only debatable one. The others are all correct. Decimals are very awkward w.r.t. grammar. For example, "Zero point five watts:" is it singular or plural? It's less than one watt and thus can't be plural, but there are multiple tenths of a watt. If I cared about perfect grammar, I would say "One tenth of a watt is" or "100 milliwatts are" instead of the bold.

Awesome thread. I'm disappointed it's taken me until today to start reading through it.

However, I'm reminded of a notice my boss put up in the kitchen at work. A simple notice composed of two sentences politely requesting that those who use the kitchen shouldn't steal other people's food from the fridge (usual office quibbles). I counted a total of thirteen errors. In two simple sentences!

If I'm having a IM conversation with someone or perhaps some email banter, I can accept abbreviations and grammatical errors, it's generally accepted in those situations. However, it amazes me that people are prepared to commit their stupidity to paper and pin it up for others to read! I'm not sure whether they just don't care about the odd mistake or they're so stupid that they don't even realise they're doing it!

Jared,

Like Claunchy said, s' is not wrong by any stretch of the imagination. Bayes's, just from a phonetic standpoint, sounds totally bad.

Here's one:

At work we have Program Coordinators and Assistant Directors. Often shortened to AD and PC.

When I pluralize, of it's AD's and PC's and not ADs and PCs. Just fundamentally wrong or is using an apostrophe here ok?

Also, I use two spaces when I type because that's how my hands are trained to work and there's no ****ing way that I'm going to unclear that for something so meaningless.

My sister is a linguist and my father worked in radio an was a massive nit as an editor (he would cut the audible "t" from "often" back when it was done using a razor and tape). They would ****ing love this thread.

ETA- I always do "Dids's" because that apostrophe just looks ******ed hanging out there at the end of a word. It's like the word has it's fly open or something. Unsightly.

ADs and PCs would be correct, Didses's.

I guess it's not really fair considering a lot of the perpetrators are foreign, but "100$" annoys me so so much. And many of the offenders are American; they're just 12 year old BBVers.

things like this make me wish i never dropped out of school

Generally, in books, yes. In magazines and newspapers, no. But it has nothing to do with a more-than-12 rule. Almost any edited text uses either the Chicago Manual of Style or the Associated Press Stylebook.

Chicago Manual: One through one hundred are spelled out (like this). Numbers from 101 and higher should be written in numeral form.

AP Style: One through nine are spelled out (like this). Numbers 10 and higher are written as numerals.

I've never heard of any stylebook or school of thought that says 13 and higher should be written as numerals, but 12 and lower should be spelled out. Pretty sure your teacher just made that up.

I don't understand why people continue to address this as if it's a debate. The subject is the number. There's no argument.

I'm going to go back to my previous example: "One of the children are white" is wrong because the subject is "one." It's the same thing.

You consider "percent" as the prepositional phrase "per cent," then? Otherwise, it'd look like "one" was a modifier to "percent" in Brock's example.

Sorry, what I meant was that the [------] in "percent of [------]" is not the subject.

Only if you're British.

i must piss alot of you mother ****ers off literally

Yeah but if you think about it, it makes some sense. Ten, eleven, and twelve are all small numbers, easy to spell out.

Once you get to the teens, it's just cumbersome to spell out thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, etc. So I was taught that the cut-off was at the teens.

It doesn't matter, but I'll continue to spell out ten, eleven, and twelve as they are relatively small words and typing "11" and "12" just looks gross to me.

Can I ask you a question? Do you like luxury?

Such a long thread.

FWIW, I think "I could care less" started out being used correctly, either in a sarcastic manner or as in "...as though I could care less".

I don't know the complaint always rubs me the wrong way, similar to if you made fun of someone saying "wise guy" to mean the opposite.

Dids:

If you wouldn't write "compact disc's" then you shouldn't write "CD's"
If you would write "compact discs" then you should write "CDs"

Same goes for your ADs and PCs.

Also, the decade from 1990-1999 is the '90s, not the 90's.

That doesn't even make sense. If you were going to be sarcastic in showing how little you cared about something, you might say "oh wow I care soooooo much," but saying you "could care less" is so vague and middle-of-the-road that it neither says you care a lot or a little.

I'm with you on the second option, but that doesn't make saying "I could care less" any less wrong when saying how little you care about something.

Wouldn't it be ninetee's?

In today's odd acronym language why use "imo" when writing some reply? Is it not already your own opinon?