Exclamation mark

3.27

In translation work, exclamation marks will be the rarest of all the punctuation marks. Be wary of those found in source texts; they could be a sign of careless drafting.

3.28

Factorials. In mathematical and statistical texts, the exclamation mark identifies a factorial:

6! = 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1

3.29

Double v. single quotation marks. Use double quotation marks to signal direct speech and verbatim quotes, and single quotation marks for quotations within these. Note that some publishers (including EUR-OP) adopt the reverse convention. Use single quotation marks to identify words and phrases that are not themselves quotes but to which you wish to draw attention as lexical items.

3.30

Short quotations. Short quotes of up to four lines or thereabouts are normally run into the surrounding text. They are set off by opening and closing quotation marks only.

3.31

Block quotations. Extended (block) quotations should be indented and separated from the surrounding text by paragraph spacing before and after. No quotation marks are required with this distinctive layout.

3.32

English text in source documents. An English text quoted in a foreign language text keeps the quotation marks in the English target text. But if a single English word or phrase is put in quotation marks simply to show that it is a foreign element, the quotation remarks should be removed.

3.33

Back-translating of quotes. Avoid if possible. However, if you cannot find the original English version, turn the passage into indirect speech without quotation marks. The same applies where the author has applied quotation marks to a non-verbatim reference.

3.34

So-called. Quotation marks are preferable to so-called, which has pejorative connotations, to render soi-disant, sogenannt, etc.

3.35

Other uses. Generally, use quotation marks as sparingly as possible for purposes other than actual quotation.

French and German writers tend to make frequent use of inverted commas for nouns in apposition (often programme or committee names etc.), as in les projets “adduction d'eau”, la partie “formation” du budget, le Conseil “Agriculture”, Arbeitsgruppe “Vereinbarkeit von Familie und Erwerbstätigkeit”, Komitee “Menschliche Faktoren”. It is usually preferable to omit the quotation marks in English.

3.36

Words ending in -s. Common and proper nouns and abbreviations ending in -s form their singular possessive with -'s (the plural remains -s'), just like nouns ending in other letters.

Mr Jones's paper; a hostess's pay; hostesses' pay

Helios's future is uncertain; MS-DOS's outlook; UNIX's success

The -s after terminal s' used to be omitted in written English but this is done only in classical and biblical names, e.g. Socrates' philosophy, Xerxes' fleet.

Note that some place names also omit the apostrophe (Earls Court, Kings Cross). Possessives of proper names in titles (e.g. Chambers Dictionary) sometimes omit the apostrophe as well. There is no apostrophe in Achilles tendon.

3.37

Plurals of abbreviations. Plurals of abbreviations (MEPs, OCTs, SMEs, UFOs, VDUs) do not take an apostrophe.

3.38

Plurals of figures. Plurals of figures do not take an apostrophe:

Pilots of 747s undergo special training.

3.39

In tables, write '000 tonnes (or of course thousand tonnes or thousands of tonnes), not in 1000 tonnes.

4.

NUMBERS

4.1

General. In deciding whether to write numbers in words or figures, the first consideration should be consistency within a passage. Where statistics are being compared in running text, use figures. In non-statistical documents write low numbers (i.e. up to nine inclusive) in words (except in a range such as 9–11).

4.2

Always use figures with units of measurement denoted by symbols or abbreviations:

DEM 10 or ten German marks, not ten DEM

EUR 50 or fifty euros

250 kW or two hundred and fifty kilowatts

205 µg or two hundred and five micrograms

The converse does not hold, i.e. numbers qualifying units of measurement that are spelled out may be written with figures: 250 kilowatts, 500 miles.

4.3

With hundreds, thousands, etc. there is a choice of using figures or words:

300 or three hundred but not 3 hundred

DEM 3 000 or three thousand German marks but not DEM 3 thousand

Million and billion, however, may be combined with figures:

2.5 million, 3 million, 31 billion

Try not to start a sentence with a figure or a symbol followed by a figure, which, strictly, should be written out. Useful devices include inversions, such as In all ..., Of the total, 55 million ...