Writing for Business - A Whatis.com Blog » dates

Forward, back, north, south

Ivy Wigmore — Fri, 14 May 2010 12:27:26 +0000

Our long-time correspondent and frequent contributor Herzl (Tselly) Regev sent in this response to the question we sent out yesterday, If a deadline’s moved forward is it earlier or later? It seems the Israeli army has a different way of looking at this issue.

Here’s Tselly’s note:

Shalom,

In Israel, the army is perhaps the most prolific source of slang. Probably from there, “to the North” means “forward”, and “to the South” is “backwards”. As in: “starting Tuesday and to the North” means “from Tuesday and forward”. So if you move a date to the North, it actually moves to the South in the calendar…

——————–
Herzl (Tselly) Regev

Oooohhhh, must sit down. My head is spinning. Like many people, I find the directional concept confusing with dates — if, for example, I push something forward, it gets farther away from me. If I push it back, it could go backwards or it could go back towards whoever pushed it towards me in the first place. I don’t think I’ll get into that. No, I’ll just sit quietly and think about stationary items. And the next time someone asks if we can push a meeting back (or forward for that matter), I’ll just say no.

Tselly wrote again to say:

Actually I’m saying that the up and down are hopelessly mixed. Indeed, what does it mean to move a date up or down?

Maybe you’d like the biblical orientation, to the orient: the usual biblical word for east is forward, west is back (or to the sea – the Mediterranean), south is right (yamin or teiman – the Hebrew name of Yemen) and north is left.

There is a famous map of Israel on display in Jordan that is thus oriented. I seem to remember a Greek map of “the world” fron the 5th century BCE that is oriented like today’s maps, so I wonder where the word “orientation” comes from.

Writing dates correctly

Ivy Wigmore — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:14:19 +0000

Which is correct?
Alexander Popov first demonstrated the use of an antenna to transmit and receive radio waves in ____________.
a. March 1896
b. March, 1896

Answer: a

Explanation:
According to AP Style, commas are only required with specific dates — March 18, 1896, for example.

1990′s or 1990s?

Ivy Wigmore — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:29:32 +0000

Which is correct?
The bandwidth demands of the average Internet user have increased dramatically since the _____.
a. 1990s
b. 1990′s

Answer: a

Explanation:
According to AP style, the only time you use an apostrophe s to pluralize is in the case of single letters: mind your P’s and Q’s!

Writing for Business — plural dates

Ivy Wigmore — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 17:35:47 +0000

Which is correct?

Arthur L. Samuel of IBM’s Watson Research Center coined the term personal computer in the _____.
a. 1960′s
b. 1960s

Answer: b
Apostrophes indicate possession or contractions, not plurality.