Quote marks: Singles or doubles?

Based on recent writing tip I wrote for my work colleagues, which was triggered by a question I received from one of them. I wanted to remind my authors about our style guide’s rules for using quote marks. Our corporate style guide follows the Australian Style Manual: For authors, editors and printers in most cases.

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The question I was asked

Can you please confirm that quotation marks are only to be used when quoting someone and NOT when you are referring to a label or term, as in the example below?  Would you suggest just the underlining is sufficient or even just Capitals for the first letter of each word associated with the term?

…We define a “System” as an integrated set of elements/objects that perform function(s) to accomplish a defined objective.  The components and their interconnections comprise the architecture of the system.  A system is characterised by inputs and outputs and is bounded by constraints and requirements.

“Systems Design” is the process of defining the architecture….

“Systems Engineering” is an interdisciplinary field of engineering….

My response

Generally, quote marks (singles—not doubles—according to the Australian Style Manual) are used only for quotations:

‘Quotation marks … primary function is to show direct speech and the quoted work of other writers. Other uses are for enclosing the title of a song or an article in a periodical, and for drawing attention to a term that is unusual or recently coined.’ (Style Manual, p 112).

That last part indicates that they can be used to emphasise a term, as in your example. While your terms are not unusual or recently coined, they can be misinterpreted, so quote marks will make it clear that you are using these terms in a specific way. If you use quote marks, then change them to single quote marks and ONLY use them for the FIRST instance of each of those terms—not throughout the document.

If you want to avoid quote marks altogether, then:

• avoid underlining as it can be confused with a hyperlink to a web page or another document.
• avoid capital letters for anything that isn’t a proper noun (places, names etc. are proper nouns) or the first word in a sentence. So, in your example, the only time you would use ‘System’ with a capital ‘S’ is when it’s the first word in the sentence.
• use bold OR italics for the words in question (though not both—that’s overkill, as is ‘Bold, Italic, Underlined, Capitalised, and Quoted’!).

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A light-hearted look at how punctuation can change meaning

Based on a recent ‘Writing Tip’ I wrote for my work colleagues.

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Bottom Line:

• Lack—or overuse—of punctuation (especially commas) can alter meaning and/or result in ambiguity.
• Ambiguous sentences are hard to understand and can be misinterpreted, thus potentially putting lives at risk.

I’ve written before about commas before (see the information on serial/Oxford commas in lists: http://cybertext.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/the-serial-or-oxford-comma/), so this time I’ll use some light-hearted examples found on the internet about how commas and other punctuation can change meaning.

Example 1:

“Most of the time, travellers worry about their luggage.”

Now delete the comma after the fourth word to totally change the meaning of this sentence:

“Most of the time travellers worry about their luggage”

Example 2:

“Stop clubbing baby seals”

And with a comma added you get this:

Example 3:

Here’s how the magazine printed the headline:

She cooks her family and her dog (yes, the dog looks worried!)??? I think they meant “…finds inspiration in cooking, her family, and her dog.”

Example 4:

Example 5:

It’s not just the addition or lack of commas that can change meaning. This example shows how the placement of punctuation, such as full stops/periods, commas, and question marks, can turn something that seems loving and innocent into something more sinister:

Dear John:

I want a man who knows what love is all about.

You are generous, kind, thoughtful.

People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior.

You have ruined me for other men.

I yearn for you.

I have no feelings whatsoever when we’re apart.

I can be forever happy.

Will you let me be yours?

Gloria

Now let’s see how those same words read with the punctuation in different places:

Dear John:

I want a man who knows what love is.

All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you.

Admit to being useless and inferior.

You have ruined me.

For other men, I yearn.

For you, I have no feelings whatsoever.

When we’re apart, I can be forever happy.

Will you let me be?

Yours,

Gloria

On a more serious note…

While these examples are humorous, they also apply to the words that you write. For example:

No commas:

This initial workshop identified the work scopes and phasing generated several different sourcing strategies for those work scopes and proposed selection criteria to compare the sourcing strategies to best benefit the [project].

Commas added (option 1 – single comma after ‘work scopes’):

This initial workshop identified the work scopes, and phasing generated several different sourcing strategies for those work scopes and proposed selection criteria to compare the sourcing strategies to best benefit the [project].

Commas added (option 2 – multiple commas to separate phrases related to the workshop’s outcomes):

This initial workshop identified the work scopes and phasing, generated several different sourcing strategies for those work scopes, and proposed selection criteria to compare the sourcing strategies to best benefit the [project].

It’s likely that the final example was what the author meant, but a reader who wasn’t at the workshop can only guess as to what happened there. If the author had added commas, the meaning would be clear and unambiguous to any reader who didn’t attend the workshop.

Day, night, anytime: Time and date formats

Based on a writing tip I recently sent out to my (Australian) work colleagues.

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In this week’s writing tip I deal with times and dates and how to write them so that their meaning is clear and unambiguous to all readers. I’ve taken most of this information from our style authority, the most recent Australian Style Manual: For authors, editors and printers (6th ed, John Wiley & Sons, 2002)

Bottom line:

• 24-hour time: four numerals only, no punctuation, no spaces (e.g. 1712)
• 12-hour time: include am or pm, separate hours and minutes with a full stop (e.g. 9.30 am), use noon and midnight instead of the ambiguous 12 am or 12 pm
• Avoid bi as a time frequency – use other words to say what you mean
• Write dates in this order: day (numeral) month (word) year (numeral), with no punctuation e.g. 4 September 2012

Time formats

The Style Manual (p172-173) has:

• 24-hour time: examples: 1700, 2318 etc. (‘Four digits are always used, the first two showing the hours and the last two the minutes. Neither punctuation nor space is inserted. Where more precise times that include decimal fractions of seconds are being expressed, colons can be used as the separator [as recommended by ISO 8601:2000]. For example: 23:59:17.’)
• 12-hour time: examples: 5 am, 9.00 am, 7 pm, 10.15 pm etc. (‘…present am and pm in lower case … The use of full stops between these abbreviated words [a.m. and p.m.] is declining and, because they are always preceded by a numeral, they can be treated like other symbols associated with numerals, which are unpunctuated. A full stop should be used to separate the hours from the minutes. Two zeros may be used to indicate even hours but are not essential [i.e. 5 am or 5.00 am are both correct].’
• The special case of noon and midnight: ‘Under the twelve-hour system, practice differs on the presentation of noon and midnight. Where confusion could be caused by using 12 am or 12 pm, it is preferable to use the terms noon and midnight. Thereafter, 12.01 pm refers to the beginning of the afternoon, and 12.01 am to the early morning.’

Date formats

The Style Manual (p170-171) has:

‘… dates are best presented using numerals for the day and year but with the name of the month … in full.’ Thus: 4 September 2012 (‘This structure is unambiguous, requires no punctuation, and progresses logically from day to month to year [...] and requires fewer keystrokes.’)

Unacceptable date formats include:

• the 4th of September, 2012
• 4th September, 2012
• September 4th, 2012
• September 4, 2012
• 4 Sep 12 (unless space is very limited, such as in a table cell)
• 4/9/2012 (this format is the LEAST ACCEPTABLE as it will be read by US readers as 9 April 2012. The Style Manual [p171] says: ‘All-numeral forms of dates can mislead because international practice varies, so ISO 8601:2000 should be followed in documents for wide distribution.’ [Note: ISO 8601:2000 specifies writing all-numeral dates in YYYYMMDD format, so 4 September 2012 would be 20120904; see also: http://cybertext.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/date-and-time-formats/]),

Words related to time

The special case of ‘bi’ words (Style Manual, p173): ‘Most prefixes that can be attached to an expression of time to indicate frequency are unambiguous—for example, tercentenary and triennial. But the prefix ‘bi’ poses problems, because it means both ‘two’ and ‘twice a …’; so bimonthly can mean either ‘every two months’ or ‘twice a month’. It is better to use more specific alternatives in place of this prefix, such as ‘twice weekly’ or ‘fortnightly’, or ‘twice monthly’ or ‘every two months’. In contrast, biannual and biennial each have one meaning only: respectively, ‘twice a year’ and ‘every two years’. Nevertheless they are often misunderstood, and so should only be used in contexts where their meaning can be made clear.’

And just to keep you on your toes, other time-related words are treated in various—sometimes conflicting—ways in the Macquarie Dictionary. For example:

• afternoon and daytime (no hyphens/spaces) compared to night-time (hyphenated)
• night shift and day shift (both separated by a space)
• midnight, midday, and midafternoon (no hyphens/spaces)

[Link last checked November 2012]

Minimal punctuation

Another post inspired by a writing tip I wrote for my work colleagues.

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Bottom line: Eliminate unnecessary punctuation, as long as it doesn’t change your meaning

The most recent edition of the Australian ‘Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Printers’ (2002) advocates the use of ‘minimal punctuation’. However, ‘minimal punctuation’ doesn’t mean NO punctuation, nor does it mean removing punctuation that might change meaning. What it does mean is getting rid of punctuation that serves no particular purpose and that is possibly a hangover from your school or university days.

Full stops (p97): Do not use a full stop (‘period’ in the US) after:

• headings
• page headers and footers
• lists that comprise short items
• captions
• certain types of shortened forms (see below for examples)
• symbols for units of measurement.

Shortened forms (p152–153):

Type	Description	Punctuation	Examples
abbreviations	first letter of a word, perhaps some other letters, but NOT the last letter	use a full stop after the abbreviation	Mon., Dec., fig., no., etc., e.g., Vic.
contractions	first and last letters, sometimes other letters in between	no full stop	Mr, Dr, Qld, Rd, dept, Cth
acronyms	strings of initial letters pronounced as a word	no full stops	ASEAN, TAFE, Qantas, SIMOPS, SEWPaC
initialisms	strings of initial letters NOT pronounced as a word	no full stops	WA, QMS, ROV, MOF, LNG
symbols	such as SI units	no full stop	km, %, kW, mL
academic degrees/qualifications		no full stops or spaces	BA, BEng, BSc, CPA, PhD

Bullet lists (p142):

• colon (:) immediately after the lead-in to clarify the link between the lead-in and the information that follows
• no punctuation at the end of dot points that are not ALL full sentences (exception: the last point takes a full stop to show that the series is complete)

On a related note, the Australian  Style Manual (p144) states that ‘there is no need to add and at the end of the second-last dot point. …the clear wording of the lead-in material [is] sufficient to show the relationship between various items. … A carefully worded lead-in is also usually sufficient to show when dot points are being presented as alternatives [and thus or is also often not required].’

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(Of course, you may use quite a different style guide and its instructions — especially regarding bullet list punctuation — may well be contradictory to this advice. Always follow your own organization’s style guide.)

To cap or not to cap, that is the question

One of the team I work with asked:

Please could you provide us with some guidance on when to use and not to use capital letters. I would expect to use capitals for proper nouns, defined terms in a legal document, position titles, acronyms, symbols for chemical elements and the first word of each sentence. In most of the reports I read, almost every noun is capitalised and a smattering of other parts of speech as well. It looks like German.

Also:

What is the shortcut key combination for converting text to lower case?

Let’s get the easy one out of the way first…

To toggle the case of a letter, word, sentence etc, select it, then press Shift+F3 once, twice, or three times. Word will toggle between lower case (‘cat’), upper case (‘CAT’), and title case (‘Cat’).

Now on to the trickier issue of when to use initial capital letters (initial caps) or not.

The guidelines are clear for some things, but more fuzzy for others, especially when it comes how to treat generic and specific terms. The Australian Style Manual’s* index lists 20 page references specifically on capitals, with another 31 page references for the 21 index subentries under ‘capital letters’! There’s no way I’ll reproduce those guidelines here, but I’ll attempt to summarise them.

The Australian Style Manual (p119) has these overarching principles:

• Sentences should always start with a capital letter.
• Initial capitals should be used for proper nouns and proper names (i.e. the names of people, places, and organisations).
• When organisations’ names are reduced to a generic element, the capitals can usually be dispensed with; however, capitals are [kept] if the shortened version still carries a specific element. Thus, the Attorney-General’s Department becomes ‘Attorney-General’s’ [or] ‘the department’.

They also make the comment that ‘One of the few remaining widespread uses of capitals to distinguish an otherwise generic word is found in legal documents, where words that have been specifically defined (such as ‘Schedule’, ‘Party’, ‘Company’, ‘Owner’) are often capitalised wherever they appear.’

When in doubt, consult your corporate style guide, a published style guide (like the Australian Style Manual or the Chicago Manual of Style), or your dictionary.

Note: This summary was written for MY team and is based on the Australian Style Manual; your style guide may differ on some of these.

Use an initial capital for…	Example	Notes/comments
The first word in a sentence	All personnel must… A risk assessment was… The stakeholders agreed…	Only exceptions: names deliberately spelled in lower case; business names built on internet addresses; trade names with mid-word capitals such as ‘eBook’
Titles and honorific names	Minister, Professor, Doctor
Personal names	Jim Jones, Mary Smith
Nationalities and distinct groups of people, religions, languages and language groups	Aboriginal, Chinese, American, Australian, Hindu	Exceptions: common words derived from geographical locations (e.g. brussels sprouts, venetian blinds)
Official names of organisations (includes companies, government departments, states etc.)	Department of Environment and Conservation, Shire of Ashburton, Government of Western Australia, XYZ Project	No caps for the generic element of these names, e.g. the department, the shire council, the council If some specificity remains (even if only implied), capitalise the specific elements, e.g. a matter for the Shire, a matter for the Department, a matter for the State government, Project-related Always use the capitalisation, spelling, and punctuation that the organisation uses
Commonwealth		ALWAYS capped when referring to the Commonwealth of Australia Note: p124–125 of the Style Manual deals specifically with all government terms and their capitalisation
Acts, Regulations, Agreements	Environmental Protection Act 1986 (WA) National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Regulations, 2008 Republic of Korea–Australia Migratory Birds Agreement	All main words of these are capitalised (title case) Acts are always italicised; Regulations are in normal text
Geographical locations (place names)	Barrow Island, Dampier, Perth, Western Australia, Pilbara, Great Barrier Reef	Exceptions: Descriptive, unofficial names for parts of a geographical entity usually don’t get capped, e.g. northern Australia; spelled out points of the compass, e.g. south-west Note: The WA Geographic Names Committee recommends (Section 4.12) that apostrophes are not used in geographic names that are named after people (e.g. St Georges Tce, NOT St George’s Tce).

Months and days	January, Monday	Exception: names of seasons, e.g. summer, winter
Taxonomic groupings down to genus level	Blattodea Blattidae, Blatta Myrtles, Myrtaceae, Eucalyptus	Species, subspecies, varietal names are NOT capped Note: Genus and species levels are italicised, as are subspecies and varietal names
Common names of specific species	Humpback Whale, White-winged Fairy-wren, Spotted Dolphin, Silver Gull, Flatback Turtle	Exceptions: common generic names of plants and animals are not capped, e.g. mammals, spiders, fish, corals, marine turtles See the WA Museum nomenclature for correct hyphenation, capitalisation
Abbreviated chemical names	CO2, H2S	Not capitalised when written in full, e.g. carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide
Personal name element of cyclones	tropical cyclone Carlos	Note: The personal name is capped, but NOT the preceding generic element (‘cyclone’, ‘tropical cyclone’)
Registered trademarks, proprietary names, brand names, computer software and hardware	Caterpillar, Toyota Land Cruiser, Microsoft Excel	Follow the capitalisation, spelling, and punctuation used by the owner
Title of books, journals, articles	Marine Ecology Progress Series	Follow the capitalisation used for the publication. In some cases it will just be the first word; in others, title case will be used, where every main word is capped
References to certain elements in a publication	Section 4.0, Figure 3.2, Chapter 9, Table 5.3	Don’t capitalise ‘pages’ (e.g. pages 23–56, NOT Pages 23–56)
Abbreviations, initialisms, and acronyms	HDD, LNG, WA	The spelled out version should obey the rules regarding proper nouns/names, so in many cases, the spelled out version is in lower case (e.g. horizontal directional drilling, liquefied natural gas, Western Australia)
Headings and captions	Sea-finding Behaviour of Marine Turtle Hatchlings	Use title case for all section headings, figure and table captions. Title case capitalises every main word, but not the ‘little’ words such as on, by, for, of, the, an, a, for, etc. Do not capitalise the second word in a hyphenated word

After colons	Note: All deliverables…	Only necessary where one or more full sentences or questions follow the colon. Otherwise, use lower case. Exception: capitalise the first word after ‘Note:’
Items in a table		First letter of each item in a table cell is capped Exception: units of measure, such as ‘metre’, that would not normally be capped
Units of measure	C, J, kg, km, m	Only some are capped; most are lower case, but there are some exceptions. See lists of SI Units for correct capitalisation Time: ‘am’ and ‘pm’ are lower case and separated from the hours/minutes by a space (e.g. 10:00 am)
Bullet lists		Follow the rules for sentences – if ALL bullet points in the one list are full sentences, cap the first words of each; otherwise, lower case for the first word of a sentence fragment (unless it’s a proper noun/name)
Job titles	Environmental Team Lead, Managing Director, Senior Engineer	Generic job titles are not capped (e.g. fitters, plumbers, electricians, project managers, administrators, team leads), but specific job titles associated with an individual are capped (e.g. Environmental Team Lead, Managing Director, Project Manager). Hint: Is the title plural or singular? Plural usually indicates that it’s generic; singular indicates it’s specific to an individual
Hyphenated terms		Depends on whether it’s used as the first word in a sentence (cap first word only) or in a heading (cap first word only) or in the body of a sentence (don’t cap at all unless a proper noun/name). Second word of a compound hyphenated term is rarely, if ever, capped (unless a proper noun/name)
Names of buildings, structures, locations etc.	Crib Room 3, Construction Village, accommodation buildings, utilities buildings	Follow the general rules for place names; i.e. initial cap each word of the official name for a specific location (e.g. Construction Village); don’t cap generic terms (generic: crib rooms; specific: Crib Room 3)
Other	Phase 2, Operations Phase	Again, the rules re specific (capped) and generic (not capped) for terms such as ‘Operations Phase’ apply. If you’re referring to the specific phase in a particular process, then you cap it; if you’re referring to the time when operations are underway, you’d typically use lower case

[Links last checked January 2012]

The serial or Oxford comma

Chris asked me to write something about the serial comma (also known as the Oxford comma, among other names). Thanks for the suggestion, Chris!

Bottom line: Separate the last two items in a list with a comma if they could be misinterpreted as being a single item.

A serial comma is the final comma in a run-on list of items; it goes before the ‘and’. (A run-on list is contained within the sentence – it’s not a bulleted list.)

In this phrase, the serial comma is the one immediately after ‘selecting’:

‘…identifying, screening, qualifying, selecting, and integrating the appropriate new technologies to be used in the project’.

Whether you use a serial comma in your writing or not mostly depends on where you went to school. If you went to school in the US, there’s a very good chance that you always use it. However, if you went to school in Australia or Great Britain, you may not use it at all, or only sometimes.

Various style guides have differing rules for its use, so it can all get a little confusing. The Australian Style Manual says this about commas in run-on lists:

‘Commas are used to separate items in a simple series or list within a sentence (e.g. The details required are name, date of birth, address and telephone number.) Sometimes a comma is needed between the last two items to ensure clarity (e.g. They should seek the support of landholders, philanthropists, government, and community and industry groups.)’

Despite being raised in the Australian education system, I tend to add a serial comma after the second last item in most run-on lists to avoid any possibility of ambiguity.

Let’s look at a simple example:

Her favourite pies were lemon meringue, mulberry, apple and pecan.

Without the serial comma, ‘apple and pecan’ could be interpreted as a pie containing both apples and pecans. If the writer meant that apple and pecan were two different types of pie, then they should have added a comma after ‘apple’ to remove any possibility that ‘apple and pecan’ could be interpreted as the one pie:

Her favourite pies were lemon meringue, mulberry, apple, and pecan.

That single comma after ‘apple’ removes all ambiguity and makes it clear that she likes four different types of pie, not three.

Other resources:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma
• http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/did-oxford-drop-the-oxford-comma.aspx
• http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/serial-comma.aspx
• http://cybertext.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/the-lack-of-a-comma-changes-meaning/
• http://cybertext.wordpress.com/2009/01/01/lets-start-the-year-with-some-punctuation-humor/

[Links last checked November 2011]

Error messages that make you feel stupid

Back in 2008 I wrote a post on writing useful error messages (http://cybertext.wordpress.com/2008/04/03/writing-useful-error-messages/), where I stated:

The worst kind of error is one that tells the user nothing and doesn’t help them recover from the error condition.

Also, don’t insult the user or call them stupid… there are many ways developers call users stupid without saying so. For example: “The password is wrong! [OK]“. This sort of error message doesn’t help the user at all, and they feel idiotic for not knowing ‘what the computer wants’. The exclamation mark so beloved by certain developers is like a slap in the face and just adds insult to injury.

Well, I came across one a few days ago that:

• doesn’t tell me what to do
• insults me (that single exclamation mark turns this statement into an insult)
• gives me a single option, which is ‘OK’ and that’s NOT OK (see http://cybertext.wordpress.com/2009/02/20/yes-yes-yes-sorry-ok/)

Here it is:

Thanks for making me feel unworthy

There was no other information on how I could get these obviously special privileges available only to the very few. Even a line about contacting my system administrator might have lessened the impact of this error message.

Removing the exclamation mark would have done a lot to convert this message from a ‘You are too stupid to have privileges’ insult to just a statement of fact. That single punctuation mark in a message such as this has the power to make a person feel like an idiot.

[Links last checked November 2011]

Comma chameleon

Two of my favorite things — commas and chameleons!

Spotted on the internet (sorry, no source for this — if you know where it’s from, let me know so I can attribute it correctly).

‘I know where the apostrophe goes…’

Continuing on the theme of apostrophes and their use and abuse, here’s a great cartoon from The New Yorker, 25 April 2011 issue (http://www.newyorker.com/humor/issuecartoons/2011/05/02/cartoons_20110425#slide=11):

From The New Yorker, 25 April 2001

What has BlackBerry got against apostrophes?

A long-time reader of this blog, J, emailed me the other day about more apostrophe anomalies. This time he was upset and amazed by what a BlackBerry smartphone did to the emails between him and his colleague. In the example he sent (below), I’ve replaced real names with fictitious ones.

His colleague — let’s call him David — works for a company that I’ll call Orefields Exploration. ‘Orefields Exploration’ is the registered name of the company and it is the plural form of ‘orefield’, which is a combined word from ‘ore’ and ‘field’. That’s the company name and how they want to be known. That’s what David has in his signature.

When David sends an email to J from his PC, Outlook leaves Orefields Exploration as written. Sure, Outlook may have flagged ‘Orefields’ as a spelling error at some point, but it’s likely that David told Outlook to add this word to the dictionary or to ignore it and not treat it as an error.

However, when David sends J an email from his BlackBerry, the company name in his signature is automatically changed to Orefield’s Exploration, without David’s knowledge or permission.

J noticed this and sent an email back to David from PC (it’s OK — they know each other well!):

I just noticed that your Blackberry signature has a typo: “Orefield’s Exploration”

This would either mean “Orefield is Exploration” or that the exploration of owned by Orefields (possessive). Neither would be correct in this context.

It should therefore be: “Orefields Exploration” (plural, meaning you examine more than one orefield exploration site).

Hope it’s correct on your business card!

The problem was that this is what David saw on his BlackBerry:

I just noticed that your Blackberry signature has a typo: Orefields Exploration

This would either mean Orefield is Exploration or that the exploration of owned by Orefields (possessive). Neither would be correct in this context.

It should therefore be: Orefields Exploration (plural, meaning you examine more than one orefield exploration site).

Hope its correct on your business card!

David’s BlackBerry is playing fast and loose with apostrophes and quotation marks!

In the original email from David’s PC, Orefields Exploration is correctly punctated, but when he sends from his BlackBerry, it becomes Orefield’s Exploration with an apostrophe that indicates possession or contraction.  

When J queries him about it, the reply email from David has NONE of the apostrophes or quotation marks that J’s original email had.

So what’s BlackBerry up to with this? I don’t have a BlackBerry (or even any sort of vaguely smart phone), so I can’t check the settings. But even if I could, I doubt it’s something in the settings as the behavior is different each time — sometimes it adds unrequired punctation; other times, it removes required punctuation.

The other surprising thing is that BlackBerry does this at all. My understanding is that BlackBerry products (there’s a reason I called them that, as you’ll see in a moment) connect to corporate Microsoft Exchange Servers. So I’d expect any emails delivered to a BlackBerry via Exchange Server to retain all punctuation and words, even if the formatting is altered. That doesn’t appear to be the case. The device appears to strip out or add punctuation as well.

BlackBerry may think that punctuation is not important, but there are plenty of court cases that have cost companies and governments lots of money over the placement or omission of punctuation such as commas, apostrophes, and the like (Google ‘rogers comma million dollars’ or ‘nasa measurement mistake’ for two examples that spring to my mind immediately).

Interestingly, when I looked at the legal usage of the BlackBerry name, the web page clearly states that you cannot call multiple BlackBerry products ‘Blackberries’ or ‘BlackBerrys’ (see
http://us.blackberry.com/legal/trademarks.jsp#tab_tab_BlackBerryTrademarkRules):

So while BlackBerry insists that people not use their product name in a plural or possessive form, they don’t seem to respect the right of a person sending an email to use words in plural or possessive or quoted form without changing them. Assuming this can all be traced back to what BlackBerry is or isn’t doing to the words in an email, that smacks of hypocrisy to me.

If anyone can explain why these punctuation changes are occurring, please comment. So far the evidence I have is that the BlackBerry software is making the changes without the permission of the user. And that’s not right.

[Links last checked May 2011]