[Workplace 485] USA, U.S. or US?Tomas Nilsson tknilsso at gmail.comFri Dec 1 12:16:28 EST 2006
Dear workplace readers, Greetings from Edmonton Canada (-17C and 35 centimeters of snow). I have three questions for y'all (related to spelling & formatting): First, what is the "appropriate acronym" for the United States of America - USA, U.S. or US? The latter reads like "us" (the objective form of we) and not like "United States", thus it confuses me. My students keep writing US instead of - what I learned - U.S. Advice? Recommendations? References that discuss this issue? Unless my eyes betray me, I haven't found any guidance in my dictionaries or styleguides. Second, what are the guidelines for using quotation marks, i.e. " and '. I know that for a quotation-within-quotation, we should use the single quotation mark, i.e. ' - should the quotation mark preceed commas, semi-colon, quotation marks, end points (dots) etc.? Third, why do some authors <still> use double-spaces (i.e. touch the spacebar on the keyboard twice before starting a new sentence). I understand that the double-spacing rule originated from the day(s) of ordinary typewriters, but I have noted on several occasions that double spacing is continued to be used. Are there any hard-and-fast-rules for when to switch between single spacing and double spacing? Thanks in advance! Tomas Nilsson -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.nifl.gov/pipermail/workplace/attachments/20061201/d719bba4/attachment.html
More information about the Workplace mailing list |