Month: February 2009

Difference between who’s and whose

Another pair of words that seems to confuse people is that of “who’s” and “whose”, but telling the difference between the two is easy. Who’s “Who’s” is a contraction, a word formed by omitting or combining some of the sounds of a longer phrase. Other examples include won’t, can’t, shouldn’t. In this case, who’s actually means “who is”.… Continue reading Difference between who’s and whose

10 things to say to sound smarter

1. Use “fewer” not “less” When speaking about a subject you can count, use “fewer”. The living room had fewer chairs than the kitchen did. Use “less” to refer to subjects you can’t count (less air, less sand, less water). 2. Use “there are” instead of “there’s” There’s is short for “there is” and should… Continue reading 10 things to say to sound smarter

Canadian Style Tip #16: Numbers

This post is part of the Canadian Style series. 1.17 Numbers When abbreviating the words number or numbers within the body of a text, use No. or Nos. but not the symbol #, which is reserved for tabular and statistical material.

Canadian Style Tip #15: Titles

This post is part of the Canadian Style series. 8.13 Titles Quotation marks should enclose the titles of the following within footnotes, bibliographies, and bodies of text: newspaper, magazine, and periodical articles book chapters short stories from collections lectures papers songs poems from collections dissertations theses unpublished manuscripts radio and TV programmes