You Don’t Say

In this scary economic climate, I love the idea of receiving a cash-back certificate in the mail. So I was very pleased to receive one from Citibank as part of a credit card protection promotion I had agreed to try out. Citibank will send me up to $15 if I follow some small-print instructions, including this one:

Your mailing envelope must be postmarked by March 31, 2009 and addressed to Redemption Center, Department 111974, P.O. Box 52900, Phoenix, AZ 85072.

There are five commas in that sentence, and the good news is they are all correct. So what’s the problem? There aren’t enough commas. I want to add one more–after the year in the date March 31, 2009.

Conventional comma wisdom calls for a comma before and after the year in a date embedded in text.: Your envelope must be postmarked by March 31, 2009, and addressed to….

Omitting the comma after the year is a common mistake. Here’s part of an email message that was in my inbox this at work this week:

On the evening of Wednesday, October 15, 2008 your voice mailbox will be moved to a new server in order to provide improved service and support.

Can we agree that “on the evening of” is probably too elegant for an email message about a server change? Good. Let’s get to the heart of the matter: the missing comma after the date.

Not a fatal mistake, but in the USA, where the month-day-year style of dates is most commonly used, commas are used both before and after the year. Don’t believe me? Check out the The Chicago Manual of Style, The New York Times Manual of Style and The Gregg Reference Manual.

You won’t be wrong with the comma, but you could cause confusion without it: On October 7, 2008 stocks crashed.

I was driving down Ventura Blvd. in Studio City, California, the other day when I saw this sign in the window of a hair salon:

Walk-in’s Welcome

Hmm. What’s that apostrophe doing there? Shouldn’t the sign read Walk-ins Welcome? I think so, if the message is that people without appointments are welcome. Of course, if the sign was meant to announce a welcome for a walk-in customer, then it’s fine as it is. My guess? Whoever approved the sign had spent too much time under the hair dryer.

What this sign needs is a plural noun—walk-ins. The message is that walk-ins are welcome at this salon. But the apostrophe turns the plural noun into the possessive form. Except in a couple of very specific situations (see #4 and #5 below), the apostrophe is not used to form the plural of a noun.

So for the folks at the salon and anyone else who needs it, here’s a quick review of the uses of the apostrophe:

1. To show possession

·       Greta’s Salon

·       the prince’s palace

2. In contractions to show that letters are missing

·       I’ve (I have)

·       haven’t (have not)

3. In dates to show the century number has been eliminated

·       ’80s disco music

·       the Spirit of ’76

4. To make the plural of certain forms of letters, abbreviations, and figures

·       dot your i’s and cross your t’s

·       Ph.D.’s

·       1990’s (or 1990s)

5. To avoid confusion

·       too many which’s and that’s

Let’s hope the folks at that Studio