Home »

[Odler]

This sentence contains five writing mistakes.

?Sheryl, a 48 years old Black woman. came to my office on Friday,

complaining of feeling dizzy and nauseous for about 8 days.?

The right way to write is:

?Sheryl, a 48-year old black woman, came to my office on Friday,

complaining of feeling dizzy or nauseated for about eight days.?

????????..

(1) ?48-year old? is an adjective clause. Therefore, the word ?year?

cannot take the plural of ?s?. In English, adjectives do not agree

in number, they are always singular.

(2) Black, as an adjective of color, should not be capitalized. Black

can take a capital B when it is a noun, as in ?A Black was the first

to land on Mars.? Those are the rules. However, many authors

whenever using black with the meaning of Negroid use capital B in

black. There is a problem with this. White (meaning Caucasian)

should also be capitalized, but no one does. Conclusion: you should

stick to the grammar: black with b, when it is a qualifier.

(3) There cannot be a period after woman. It would be in the middle

of a sentence.

(4) If you are NAUSEATED, it means you feel like vomiting. If you

are NAUSEOUS, it means you MAKE ME feel like vomiting (every time I

see you, or something). Sheryl did not make feel me that way, so she

must have been NAUSEATED, not nauseous.

(5) Between 0 and 10, the numbers must be written out. You should

never write ?8 days?, but ?eight days?. Between 10 and 20, you can

go either way: ?fourteen days? or ?14 days? is good. Above twenty, the

digits should be written, e.g., 46 (not forty-six). Exception: if

the number is the first word of the sentence is should be written in

letters, not in digits. Example: Fifty-five is much too young an age

to be an ex-president (not 55).

Got it?

P.S: No one won.

(OdlerRobert Jeanlouie, Tuesday, May 07, 2002)