Sydney Writers' Centre blog

Tip: Company names as plural or singular nouns

I see this mistake so often, that I suspect this grammar error may have dropped completely off people's writing radar because we see both versiond all the time. Do you know which of these two sentences is correct?

Coles believes they are the best supermarket.
Coles believes it is the best supermarket.

Should the company name Coles be treated as plural or singular? There are a lot of people who work at Coles, and a lot of stores, so is the plural version correct?

The second sentence is correct. The business name is a singular noun, even if it looks plural, and therefore you must use a singular verb. People often make this mistake, but just remember that a company is a single entity.

Online Editor/Community Manager position available in Sydney

Dynamic Business is looking for an Online Editor/Community Manager. You can apply for the job here.

The job advertisement:

Online editor/community manager

Can you write compelling headlines, use social media in your sleep and manage online forums? Do you have a genuine interest in entrepreneurs and small business? This could be the job for you.

The soon to be relaunched www.dynamicbusiness.com.au needs a new online editor/community manager. This is an exciting opportunity for someone to help take our site to the next level and manage what we hope will be active new discussion forums and video content.

Responsibilities include:

*Writing and SEOing fresh news stories daily
*Coming up with strategies to increase traffic to the site
*Producing 2 eNewsletters per week
*Sourcing exclusive website content
*Managing the @dynamicbusiness Twitter feed and helping keep the Facebook and LinkedIn groups up to date
*Managing bloggers and contributors
*Interviewing successful entrepreneurs for profile pieces
*Attending launches and media events as the face of the website
*Managing forums to encourage discussions on small business topics
*Managing Google Analytics reporting
*Liaising with ad sales, production, our inhouse web developer and other editorial staff.

A key part of this role will be encouraging and managing active discussion forums on the site.

In return we offer a workplace culture that money just can’t buy at our North Sydney office and an above average salary.

Loyalty Media is a work hard, play hard employer. We are a boutique publishing house with a suite of custom published products, the market leading news stand title Dynamic Business magazine and a number of websites.

Please email a cover letter and resume by Friday 28 January 2011. Applications without cover letters will not be considered.

Jen Bishop, Publisher, jen.bishop@dynamicbusiness.com

-ends-

Not ready to go for a full time writing job, but still want to explore how to make a living from your writing as a freelancer? Explore our online or face-to-face Feature Writing course to start writing and earning extra money while maintaining your current job.

Tip: When should you use an ampersand? And what the hell is it?

We're often asked when it's ok to use an ampersand. If you're not sure what this is, it's the symbol for and: "&". Yes the "squiggle for the word and" as we've heard it referred to.

The short answer is: almost never. It's acceptable to use it when it's part of a name like:
* sass & bide (clothing label)
* Johnson & Johnson (health company)

While you may see the ampersand used in SMS or Twitter messages and on signs (in order to save space), it should generally not be used to replace the word "and" in everyday letters, websites, books and so on.

Tip: That is a real problem

We all have quirky writing habits that need attention. Mine involves the word "that". When I write, I know I overuse the term. So when I'm finished, I always go over my work and delete any extraneous "thats". It's a useful exercise for all writers so I encourage you to do it too. Read through your work: if the sentence still makes sense when you delete the word "that", do it.

For example:
Rambo the dog knew that he was going to get dinner soon.

Delete the word "that" and it still makes sense:
Rambo the dog knew he was going to get dinner soon.

Did you know: How did CamelCase evolve?

So what have camels got to do with writing and why are they carrying a case? Once upon a time, it was easy:

There was:
    UPPER CASE
    lower case
    And sentence case.

But now there's CamelCase (sometimes known as "medial capitals" or "embedded capitals"). This is where compound words are joined without spaces in between. Here are some example:

    YouTube
    PayPal
    PricewaterhouseCoopers
    WikiLeaks
    HarperCollins

It gained momentum when computer programmers wanted to avoid using spaces in the work. More recently, as you can see from the major names above who use it, the practice has become more common among marketers and branding experts. The general rule is that unless you are writing an official name that uses CamelCase, there should be no other reason for you to use it!

Writing tip: Writing numbers

We often receive queries about how to write numbers so we thought we'd set the record straight here. The first thing to note is that there is no hard and fast rule, but there are certain conventions that people choose to adopt. Here is the usual guideline adopted by most newspapers and corporations:

When writing numbers one to nine, you spell out the number.
One, two, three and so on.

When writing numbers 10 and above, you use the digits.
10, 25, 136, 780 and so on.

When starting a sentence with a number, always spell it out.
‘Twelve-year-old dog Rambo used to live at Doggie Rescue before coming to the Sydney Writers' Centre.’

‘Thirty teenagers were injured when a balcony collapsed in Sydney's northern suburbs on the weekend.’

However, the above rules may be over-ridden by your company's house style guide. Some organisations, particularly those that communicate mainly online, prefer all numbers to be written as digits. Your organisation's house style should also outline how to write really big numbers like 26 million. If you don't have a style guide to follow, the usual convention is:

7 million, not 7,000,000
7.24 million, not 7,240,000
Below 1 million: 230,000, not 0.23 million

Happy numbering!