Question

Respond to each prompt using Answer style. Do not insert additional blank lines. Please identify
quotations (through use of quotation marks or block indentation) and identify the source of your
quotations or paraphrases to earn credit for your answers: in parentheses, provide the title and
section number for CMS or for SSF.
1. Distinguish between headline (title) capitalization and sentence capitalization. Is the use
of sentence capitalization the same as use of a “down” style?
2. If Charles Dickens owns a book, which of the following is preferred? (Highlight your
choice in yellow.)
1. Dickens’ book
2. Dickens’s book
3. In general, when discussing a term, is it best to italicize the term, to underline the term, or
to place the term in quotation marks?
4. Distinguish between closed, hyphenated, and open compounds.
5. William Faulkner wrote A Fable. Which of the following questions is standard?
(Highlight your choice in yellow.)
1. Have you read Faulkner’s A Fable?
2. Have you read Faulkner’s Fable?
6. Which of the following are acceptable, assuming that I am a professor? (Highlight your
choices in yellow.)
1. Professor Nord
2. Prof. Roland Nord
3. Prof. Nord
4. Roland Nord, Professor of English
5. Roland Nord, professor of English
6. Roland Nord, professor of english
7. Distinguish between grammar and usage.
8. Should editors discourage writers from ending sentences with prepositions? Why or why
not?
9. Should editors discourage writers from beginning sentences with conjunctions? Why or
why not?
10. What general dictionary does CMS recommend for editors?

10/2/2020 - 2 - Spelling and grammar quiz

Copy the prompt and paste it below (as shown in #11) using Answer style; then, use track
changes to copyedit each sentence for spelling, capitalization, and grammar. If you need to query
the author, insert a comment.
11. They should give a award to whoever the production staff choose as most effective
manager.
They should give a award to whoever the production staff choose as most effective
manager.
12. Remember, it don’t matter who you like; its who you know.
13. After removing the wrench from the cogs, the machinery resumed production.
14. Although she was majoring in Computer Science she hoped to get a job as a technical
writer when she will graduate at the end of Spring Semester 2009.
15. His dissertation entitled Individual Nuclear Disarmament: Nuking Nuclides focused on
Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) and the affect of radiation on its Adenine, Thymine,
Cytosine, and Guanine bases.
16. As he stood in the grocery express line (for 12 items or less) he mused about the amount
of food on the shelves and the amount of people who shopped at Ralphs’ Pretty Good
Food Store.

Answer 1

1.

When it comes to creating headlines and titles for articles, it can get unclear what words to capitalize and what words should remain lower case. There are several styles of title and headline capitalization in use. For the most part, there are general rules that follow with a few minor deviations between them. For those who write, it's important to understand these rules about which words to capitalize when creating headlines and titles.

Major Headline Capitalization Styles

There are four major title capitalization styles. These are:

• AP Style - Capitalize Words With Four or More Letters (Associated Press style)
• APA Style - Capitalize Words with Five or More Letters (APA Style)
• Chicago Style - Do Not Capitalize Words Based on Length (Chicago Manual of Style)
• MLA Style - Capitalize Major Words and Those With Four or More Letters (MLA Style)

There is no single authoritative style guide when it comes to capitalizing headlines and titles, though some are used for certain types of writing. For instance, the Associated Press Stylebook (AP Style) is frequently used by news organizations, the Chicago Manual of Style (Chicago Style) is more complete for in-depth writing, and the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (MLA style) is used for academic papers. While this is where the different styles are usually used, it's not compulsory to use a particular style for a particular type of writing. If you are unsure of which style to use, the best method is to seek out which style the course, editor, or teacher prefers so that you know, and then use that specific style. If you're in a certain field, you should learn the style that's most prominent in your field. For example, the AP Style for those in journalism, and the MLA style if you're in academics. In all cases, it's best to ask for each project to make sure since each style has its own rules.

General Headline Style Rule: Title Case

• Capitalize the first word in the title
• Capitalize the last word in the title
• Capitalize the important words in the title

As in the last point, "important" words include -

• Adjectives (beautiful, large, hopeful)
• Adverbs (forcefully, silently, hurriedly)
• Nouns (computer, table, manuscript)
• Pronouns (they, she, he)
• Subordinating conjunctions (as, so, that)
• Verbs (write, type, create)

Sentence Case

The other main type of title capitalization standard is sentence case. Sentence case simply means we capitalize the first letter of a sentence, proper nouns, and nothing else as opposed to capitalizing almost every first letter in title case. It is the same across all of the four styles.

10 capitalization rules

· Capitalize the first word in a sentence.

· Capitalize the pronoun “I.”

· Capitalize proper nouns: the names of specific people, places, organizations, and sometimes things.

· Capitalize family relationships when used as proper nouns.

· Capitalize titles that appear before names, but not after names.

Implementing Sentence Case

In sentence case, lowercase most words in a title or heading. Capitalize only the following words:

· the first word of the title or heading

· the first word of a subtitle

· the first word after a colon, em dash, or end punctuation in a heading

· nouns followed by numerals or letters

· proper nouns (such as the names of racial or ethnic groups)

Using Sentence Case

We use sentence case for the following:

· titles of articles, books, reports, webpages, and other works in reference list entries, even if title case was used in the original work

· Sentence case is when we only capitalize the first letter of the first word in a heading – like you would in a sentence. Proper nouns are also capitalized. This is sentence case.

· With title case (also known as upstyle), we capitalize the first letter of each word: This is Title Case.

Headline (title) capitalization/Title Case and Sentence capitalization/Senternce Case

Title Case

Title case is used to capitalize the following types of titles and headings in APA Style:

· Titles of references (e.g., book titles, article titles) when they appear in the text of a paper,

· Titles of inventories or tests,

· Headings at Levels 1 and 2,

· The title of your own paper and of named sections within it (e.g., the Discussion section), and

· Titles of periodicals—journals, magazines, or newspapers—which are also italicized (e.g., Journal of Counseling Psychology, The New York Times).

Here are directions for implementing APA’s title case:

1. Capitalize the first word of the title/heading and of any subtitle/subheading;

2. Capitalize all “major” words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns) in the title/heading, including the second part of hyphenated major words (e.g., Self-Report not Self-report); and

3. Capitalize all words of four letters or more.

This boils down to using lowercase only for “minor” words of three letters or fewer, namely, for conjunctions (words like and, or, nor, and but), articles (the words a, an, and the), and prepositions (words like as, at, by, for, in, of, on, per, and to), as long as they aren’t the first word in a title or subtitle. You can see examples of title case in our post on reference titles.

Sentence Case

Sentence case, on the other hand, is a capitalization style that mainly uses lowercase letters. Sentence case is used in a few different contexts in APA Style, including for the following:

· The titles of references when they appear in reference list entries and

· Headings at Levels 3, 4, and 5

Here are directions for implementing sentence case in APA Style in these two contexts:

1. Capitalize the first word of the title/heading and of any subtitle/subheading;

2. Capitalize any proper nouns and certain other types of words; and

3. Use lowercase for everything else.

Additionally, as you might suspect given its name, sentence case is used in regular sentences in the text of a paper. In a typical sentence, the first word is always capitalized, and the first word after a colon is also capitalized when what follows the colon is an independent clause.

2.

1. Dickens’ book
2. Dickens’s book

In the above case, the second highlighted in yellow is preferred.

The general rule is that the possessive of a singular noun is formed by adding an apostrophe and s, whether the singular noun ends in s or not. The possessive of a plural noun is formed by adding only an apostrophe when the noun ends in s, and by adding both an apostrophe and s when it ends in a letter other than s.

3.

Using Italics, Underlining and Quotation Marks.

We use italics (characters set in type that slants to the right) and underlining to distinguish certain words from others within the text. These typographical devices mean the same thing; therefore, it would be unusual to use both within the same text and it would certainly be unwise to italicize an underlined word. As word-processors and printers become more sophisticated and their published products more professional looking, italics are accepted by more and more instructors. Still, some instructors insist on underlines (probably because they went to school when italics were either technically difficult or practically unreadable). It is still a good idea to ask your instructor before using italics. (The APA Publication Manual continues to insist on underlining.) In this section, we will use italics only, but they should be considered interchangeable with underlined text.

These rules and suggestions do not apply to newspaper writing, which has its own set of regulations in this matter.

Italics do not include punctuation marks (end marks or parentheses, for instance) next to the words being italicized unless those punctuation marks are meant to be considered as part of what is being italicized: "Have you read Stephen King's Pet Semetary? (The question mark is not italicize here.) Also, do not italicize the apostrophe-s which creates the possessive of a title: "What is the Courant 's position on this issue?" You'll have to watch your word-processor on this, as most word-processors will try to italicize the entire word that you double-click on.

Titles

Generally, we italicize the titles of things that can stand by themselves. Thus we differentiate between the titles of novels and journals, say, and the titles of poems, short stories, articles, and episodes (for television shows). The titles of these shorter pieces would be surrounded with double quotation marks.

In writing the titles of newspapers, do not italicize the word the, even when it is part of the title (the New York Times), and do not italicize the name of the city in which the newspaper is published unless that name is part of the title: the Hartford Courant, but the London Times.

Other titles that we would italicize include the following:

· Journals and Magazines: Time, U.S. News and World Report, Crazyhorse, Georgia Review

· Plays: Waiting for Godot, Long Day's Journey Into Night

· Long Musical Pieces: Puccini's Madama Butterfly, Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite (but "Waltz of the Flowers"), Schubert's Winterreise (but "Ave Maria"). For musical pieces named by type, number and key — Mozart's Divertimento in D major, Barber's Cello Sonata Op. 6 — we use neither italics nor quotation marks.

· Cinema: Slingblade, Shine, The Invisible Man

· Television and Radio Programs: Dateline, Seinfeld, Fresh Air, Car Talk

· Artworks: the Venus de Milo, Whistler's The Artist's Mother

· Famous Speeches: Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, Washington's Second Inaugural Address (when that is the actual title of the speech)

· Long Poems (that are extensive enough to appear in a book by themselves): Longfellow's Evangeline, Milton's Paradise Lost, Whitman's Leaves of Grass

· Pamphlets: New Developments in AIDS Research

Titles of long sacred works are not Italicized: the Bible, the Koran. Nor do we italicize the titles of books of the Bible: Genesis, Revelation, 1 Corinthians.

When an exclamation mark or question mark is part of a title, the mark is italicized along with the title,

· My favorite book is Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

· I love Dr. Seuss's Oh, the Places You'll Go!

Quotation marks [ “ ” ] Is used to set off material that represents quoted or spoken language. Quotation marks also set off the titles of things that do not normally stand by themselves: short stories, poems, and articles. Usually, a quotation is set off from the rest of the sentence by a comma; however, the typography of quoted material can become quite complicated.

· My father always said, "Be careful what you wish for."

• "I don't care," she said, "what you think about it."

4.

Compound Words

When two words are used together to form a new meaning, a compound is formed. Compound words can be written in three ways: as open compounds (spelled as two words, e.g., ice cream), closed compounds (joined to form a single word, e.g., doorknob), or hyphenated compounds (two words joined by a hyphen, e.g., long-term). Sometimes, more than two words can form a compound (e.g., mother-in-law).

The most common spelling quandary writer’s face is whether to write compounds as separate words, one word, or hyphenated words.

Open Compound Words

An open compound word is created in cases when the modifying adjective is used with its noun to create a new noun. This isn’t quite the same as a noun with a modifying adjective. We just use a space between the adjective and the noun, so sometimes it can be hard to identify as a compound; however, if the two words are commonly used together, it’s considered to be a compound word.

living room

full moon

real estate

When adverbs ending in -ly combine with another word, the resulting compound is always spelled as two separate words.

largely irrelevant

newly formed

Closed Compound Words

Closed compound words look like one word. At one point, these words weren’t used together, but they’re now accepted as a “real word” in the English language. Closed compound words are usually made up of only two words. Here are some closed compound examples.

notebook

Superman

waistcoat

bookstore

fireman

The English language is always evolving, and when words become used more frequently, they are often eventually written as one word. When the Internet first began, for example, we talked about going on-line. Now that this is a daily experience for most of us, the spelling online has become commonly accepted.

Hyphenated Compound Words

There are a great many grammar rules regarding hyphens in compound words. One important rule of thumb to remember is that in most cases, a compound adjective is hyphenated if placed before the noun it modifies, but not if placed after the noun.

a long-term solution

an up-to-date user guide

But…

This is not a good solution for the long term.

This user guide is not up to date.

This is just one of many rules concerning hyphens in compound words and it is often necessary to consult the dictionary to determine whether these terms should be hyphenated or not.