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Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Criminal Sentence 319: Symbols and words

Seen on a sign:

"500' to 1000' square feet"

A similar problem:

"$10 million dollars"

English has a handy number of symbols that are used in the place of words. Therefore, it is redundant to use both the symbol and the word at the same time.

In the feet example, it would be better to get rid of the ' symbol; in the dollars example, get rid of the word "dollars."

2 comments:

JoAnn said...

You would say $10 million? Why not $10,000,000 or ten million dollars?

The Sentence Sleuth said...

Sure, those ways are fine, too.