Tag Archives: Geographical names

Full stops and other shortened words (measurements, acronyms and initialisms)

Measurements There is a very simple rule with abbreviations for metric measurements: you never use a full stop with them. mm, cm, m, km ml, L g, kg, kJ ha (I have to confess that I don’t know what Americans do, but, on the whole, Americans don’t use the metric system, so it probably isn’t

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Apostrophes and place names

In Australia, it is quite simple, if ungrammatical and plain stupid. A bureaucratic body ( the Geographical Names Board) decided back in 1966 that no Australian place names should contain possessive apostrophes.  This means we are stuck with wrong-looking (and, in my view, plain wrong) names such as Devils Marbles (thankfully, we can use the

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