Page 51 - Today’s Business Communication; A How-to Guide for the Modern Professional

40 TODAY’S BUSINESS COMMUNICATION

• Are/Our—Our is a possessive, and are is a helping verb.
• Complement/Compliment—A complement is a nice addition
to something, while a compliment is a nice thing you can say
about someone else.
• Principal/Principle—A principal is a high-ranking individual
or concept, and a principle refers to something that is
fundamental.

Number Use

Business writers commonly misuse numbers. To help you use numbers
correctly in most situations, here is some advice in three categories:

• General Use—(a) Write numbers one through ten as words,
(b) write numbers 11 and above as figures, and (c) write num-
bers as words if they appear at the beginning of a sentence.
• Money and Dates—(a) Write sums greater than $1 as figures,
(b) write numbers in dates as figures if the day appears after
the month (e.g., June 10, 2013), and (c) write numbers
in dates as ordinals if the day appears before the month
(e.g., 10th of June).
• Clock Time—(a) Write numbers as figures when expressed
with a.m. or p.m. (e.g., 5:30 p.m.), (b) drop the colon and
last two digits when referring to the top of the hour (e.g.,
5 p.m.), and (c) write numbers as words or figures when writ-
ten with the word “o’clock” (e.g., five o’clock or 5 o’clock).

In addition to these guidelines, we urge you to aim for consistency. For
instance, if you have a date and time in the same sentence, treat both
in the same manner. Consider the following example: Please attend the
4 o’clock meeting on July 15� Although you have the option of writing
“four” rather than “4,” the latter is consistent with your use of “15.”

Capitalization

The rules governing capitalization are easy to follow, but commonly
misused. First, you should capitalize proper nouns (e.g., Connecticut).