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Fall 2004 / The Merciless Grammarian Fall 2004 / Training
The Merciless Grammarian spews his wrath on nasty problems of grammar, mechanics, and style.
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Drawing by Nathan Baran Most Merciless of Grammarians, I was finishing up a paper on Athanasius Kircher for my history of science class when I decided to run it by two of my housemates. When one of them read it, she flagged the following sentence: Kircher went on to publish over thirty works on subjects ranging from hieroglyphics to magnetism. She said I should write the thirty as a numeral (30), but when I passed the paper along to my other housemate, he said I should change it back. What gives? Numerically challenged, Gregory Thomas Woolridge, Esq. Dear Challenged, How good to read the name of the Master of a Hundred Arts! How often have I pored over his subtle and ingenious diagrams, hoping to twist them to my own benighted ends. Your housemates, as you call them, seem to be pawns in a stylistic Cold War. Consider the superpowers: on the one side are the newspapers and their minions, on the other the vaunted scribes of academe. Various college writing handbooks have fallen in with either camp, now touting one approach to
spelling out numbers, now another. Your first reader is in league with the journalistic powers. Associated Press style advocates spelling out whole numbers less than ten and using numerals for larger numbers. The American Psychological Association and the Scott, Foresman Handbook have followed suit. Your second reader has cast his lot with the academic cabal. The Chicago Manual of Style prescribes spelling “whole numbers from one to ninety-nine and any of these whole numbers followed by hundred, thousand, hundred thousand, million, etc.” All other numbers are to be written as numerals. The Modern Language Association promotes this approach, as do the Penguin Handbook and the New Century Handbook. All styles, regardless of their allegiance, agree that numbers at the beginning of a sentence should be spelled out: Fifty feet is a long way to plummet to one’s doom. So the choice lays before you, Master Woolridge: do you raise the monochrome banner of the press or the tweed oriflamme of the academy? Let context be your guide. Does your teacher prefer one style over the other? Would using too many numerals make your paper look like a ledger book, or would spelling out numbers slow the reader down too much? While I despise vacillation with a horror usually reserved for intestinal flukes, in this case I must leave you to your choice. Ruthlessly yours, The Merciless One ‹ Fall 2004 / About Us
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