Monday, December 19, 2011

Poll Results 163

Here was the question:

What's wrong here? "At five fifty one of the kitchen guys reported for work."

The time should be spelled out.
5 (10%)
The grammar is incorrect.
4 (8%)
A punctuation mark might be necessary.
35 (74%)
Nothing is wrong.
3 (6%)

I agree with 74% of you. The sentence is not incorrect, but it could be confusing. I would add a comma:

"At five fifty, one of the kitchen guys reported for work."
at

3 comments:

  1. DuncanDecember 19, 2011 at 6:04 PM

    I would have written "At 5.50pm one of the kitchen guys reported for work.".

    ReplyDelete
  2. PatrickBJanuary 30, 2012 at 2:32 PM

    I agree with Duncan. I would have written 5:50 PM (AM?), followed by that comma. Since the word following the comma is "one," I would definitely write out the time. Otherwise, the reader could read 5:51 instead of 5:50. I know the comma helps, but it doesn't make it any less awkward. The other problem is that there are to 5:50s in most days, and the reader doesn't know if the writer is referring to morning or early evening.

    ReplyDelete
  3. PatrickBJanuary 30, 2012 at 2:33 PM

    edit from last post:

    -I would write out the time (using numbers)

    -two, not to.

    Ugh.

    ReplyDelete

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