How to Refer to Time

How to Refer to Time How to Refer to Time How to Refer to Time By Mark Nichol It’s time to talk about time: specifically, how to write references to units of temporal measurement. This post will note style for increments from seconds to centuries. Time of Day Imprecise times of day are generally spelled out: â€Å"six-o’clock news,† â€Å"half past one,† â€Å"a quarter to three,† and â€Å"eight thirty,† as well as â€Å"noon† and â€Å"midnight,† which are preferable to â€Å"12 pm† or â€Å"12 am,† because technically, these times are neither post meridiem (â€Å"after midday†) or ante meridiem (â€Å"before midday†). Another solution is to write â€Å"12 noon† or â€Å"12 midnight,† although the latter term could refer to either the very beginning or the very end of a given day. The style for precise time is â€Å"12:34,† though one-hour increments can be written with or without double zeroes as placeholders: Write â€Å"1:00 p.m.† or â€Å"1 p.m.,† though the former style is often seen as punctilious. Much of the world uses a twenty-four-hour clock system, so that the U.S. notation â€Å"1:23† is rendered almost everywhere else as â€Å"1323,† without a colon. This system is used occasionally in the United States, as in military and technological usage. Months and Days and/or Years References to dates consisting of the month and day require no comma (â€Å"October 10 is tomorrow†), but set off an appended year with commas (â€Å"October 10, 1960, dawned clear and bright†). (Don’t abbreviate the name of the month except in statistical arrays such as graphs and charts or to preserve direct quotations.) A subsequent mention of a day of the month (in which the month is known but not expressed again), however, should be spelled out in ordinal form (â€Å"The 11th, by contrast, was dark and gray†); note that the ordinal should not be styled in superscript form. Omit a comma before and after the year when the month but not a specific date precedes it: â€Å"January 2010 was an unusually wet month.† A note to writers of American English: Keep in mind that much of the world uses day-month-year notation (â€Å"25 December, 2010,† and â€Å"25-12-10† as shorthand for that date), so make sure international readers are clear about which number-only notation you use. Years Years are almost always rendered in numerals. One major exception honors the convention of not beginning a sentence with a number, but it’s better to recast a sentence than to write, â€Å"Two thousand eleven began auspiciously.† Another end run around this problem is to precede the year at the beginning of a sentence with the phrase â€Å"The year,† but this strategy introduces nonessential wording and creates an inconsistency if other years are mentioned in the same content. Years can also be abbreviated (â€Å"the spirit of ’76,† â€Å"the panic of ’29†), but note that the elision marker is an apostrophe, not an open single quotation mark. Decades Decades are displayed in numeral form or spelled out. However, no apostrophe is needed in the former style (â€Å"2010s,† not â€Å"2010’s†), although some publications retain this archaism. Do, however, precede the elided version of a decade with an apostrophe, just as in informal references to specific years, as mentioned in the previous post. Phrases that include more than one decade generally use complete numbers for all decades (â€Å"the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s†)† but elision is acceptable in informal usage. Lowercase spelled-out versions (â€Å"the nineties†) unless the number is part of the signifier of a cultural era (â€Å"the Roaring Twenties†). Ten-year ranges of decades are divided one of two ways: â€Å"2000-2009† (or â€Å"2000-09†), or â€Å"2001-2010† (or â€Å"2001-10†). If your writing project includes multiple references to decades and you mix decade ranges and spelled-out names of decades throughout, make your preference for when a decade starts known, and stick with it. Note that the first two decades of any given century cannot logically or gracefully be rendered in numerals or words: â€Å"1900s† already applies to the entire century, and â€Å"1910s† is inelegant because the numbers between 10 and 20 do not have the same naming patterns as the larger numbers; meanwhile, â€Å"the oughts† (or â€Å"aughts†) and â€Å"the teens† are widely considered clumsy solutions. Centuries and Eras Spell out or use numerals for names of centuries consistently depending on what style you use for other periods of time, but lowercase the word century. BCE and CE (â€Å"before Common Era† and â€Å"Common Era†) are acceptable secular alternatives to AD (anno Domini, or â€Å"the year of our Lord†) and BC (â€Å"before Christ†), but the traditional forms prevail. Note that syntactically, AD precedes the year, while BC follows it. (You’ll often see these abbreviations rendered in small caps diminutive versions of uppercase letters but this practice is fading in frequency.) Also, although the second number in a range can usually be elided to two digits (â€Å"2001-10†), when used with BC or BCE, the full form should be used to avoid confusion because, in these cases, the range falls rather than rises. (In other words, â€Å"175-50 BC† is the full expression of a 125-year range, not one of a single generation in which the second number is elided.) Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Style category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:4 Types of Gerunds and Gerund PhrasesProbable vs. PossibleThe Uses of â€Å"The†

Word Choice Content vs. Contents

Word Choice Content vs. Contents Word Choice: Content vs. Contents If you’re used to English pluralization, you might assume â€Å"contents† is just the plural of â€Å"content.† And both terms do have a general sense of â€Å"something within something.† But there is a difference between these words, so check out our guide below to make sure your writing is error free. Content (Uncountable Noun) The singular â€Å"content† is typically an uncountable noun. Uncountable nouns are terms that refer to something as an undifferentiated whole, such as â€Å"water† or â€Å"sand.† The main use of â€Å"content,† then, is to refer to something within something else as a whole: The content of the wedding speech made the groom blush. Croissants have a very high fat content. In the first sentence above, for instance, the â€Å"container† is the wedding speech. So when we say â€Å"content,† we mean â€Å"what the speech says as a whole.† And in the second sentence, the â€Å"container† is the croissant, so the â€Å"content† is the fat in the croissant. In both cases, though, â€Å"content† involves treating something as a whole, not as separate items. Contents (Countable Noun) The plural â€Å"contents† is usually a countable noun. We thus use it when we can separate the â€Å"content† of something into individual items, like chapters in a book or items in a bag. For example: I checked the table of contents to find the appendix. The contents of her shopping bag spilled across the ground. As such, using â€Å"contents† shows that we’re treating each item of content as a separate thing rather than lumping them together as a whole. A table of contents. â€Å"Content† as a Verb and Adjective We’ve looked at the noun â€Å"content† above, but this word can also be a verb or an adjective. As a verb, it means â€Å"satisfy† or â€Å"induce a state of contentment†: He contented himself with watching the TV. The third-person singular form of this is â€Å"contents.† This is the only time you will need this spelling other than when it’s a countable noun. As an adjective, meanwhile, â€Å"content† means â€Å"pleased or satisfied†: I was content to spend my life proofreading. But the adjectival form of this word is only ever spelled â€Å"content.† Summary: Content vs. Contents While â€Å"content† and â€Å"contents† can both mean â€Å"something contained within something,† there’s usually a subtle difference in how we use these terms: Content is an uncountable noun. We use it when referring to the contained thing as an undifferentiated whole (e.g., the â€Å"content of a speech†). Contents is a plural countable noun. We use it when the things in a container are separate and countable (e.g., book chapters in a â€Å"table of contents†). Key when choosing between these terms, then, is considering whether you can count the contained things. The only other occasion you would use the spelling â€Å"contents,† moreover, is as a third-person singular verb meaning â€Å"satisfy,† but this is quite a rare usage. And if you’d like further help with the spelling in a document, try our proofreading service.