Writing and Grammar - Dates

As an editor, I am able to see many common mistakes that people tend to make consistently in their writing. Conversational style is great in the tone of the piece, and sometimes grammar does indeed take a back seat to impact and imagery. However, there are certain common errors that are made in writing that do not change impact or imagery and are simply grammar and editing errors. Let's look at one of the most common writing mistakes made.

DATES

One of the most common mistakes I see in editing appears to be a little known rule about how to properly punctuate and use dates in writing, especially denoting a year. Unfortunately, this is such a common mistake that most people aren't even aware that it is not grammatically correct when they see the error. I've even seen these errors in headlines of major newspapers and magazine, and this error proliferates the internet.

When you are writing and have the need to include a date, proper format for writing out the complete date is as follows:

Example:October 31, 2006

Now, this is usually written properly, but what happens when you want to include the day of the week?

Example: Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Then there is the special circumstance where you might want to write the date like this:

Friday the 13th, October 2006

Note that there is no comma before the year when the month immediately precedes it.

But these are mostly used correctly, and are included here only for reference. The one that bothers me the most about dates is the use of the year, abbreviated, and how that is often punctuated incorrectly.

For example, we often refer to decades by only the last two digits of the year, right? The decade that is 1980-1989 is often referred to as The '80s.

Now, note how I wrote - '80s

An apostrophe is used for two things in writing -

1) a contraction, meaning that something was removed or left out, and the apostrophe takes the place of the missing item. In the word don't the contraction is short for DO NOT and the apostrophe takes the place of the O in the word NOT

2) an apostrophe is used to denote possession on some words where the word will end with an S. While it isn't used on all words to show possession (the exception most noted being: its), it is for most.

Sally's dog
Tom's briefcase

In the instance of the dates we are referring to, use both of these rules to determine the appropriate way to punctuation the decades.

Because the decade of 1980-1989 is abbreviated from the 1980s, the apostrophe belongs at the beginning of the number, and because there is no need to show possession for the decade, there is no apostrophe between the number and the S.

Example: '80s, '90s, etc.

The decade itself often is used as an adjective, and people sometimes mistake this as being the possessive form, and thus in need of the apostrophe. This is not the case.

Example: The '80s rock band, Duran Duran, had a successful career. (although the opinion is up for debate, the sentence is grammatically correct.)

Note that in this example, '80s is an adjective describing the rock band and not a possessive denoting that the rock band is owned, possessed by, or belongs to the decade itself.

Just some tips for writers out there about how to properly denote dates and years in professional writing, even though many of the professionals make these same mistakes regularly.