Tag Archives: Place names

Clydesdale horses

Proper adjectives: the forgotten relative of proper nouns

We know that there are proper nouns, and we know that we use capital letters for proper nouns. But there is another group of words in English that we capitalise, and they are called proper adjectives. Never heard of them? Don’t worry: most people haven’t. Proper adjectives are like the long-lost cousin of proper nouns,

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Adjectives, nouns and adjectival nouns (part 2): to use apostrophes or not to use apostrophes?

I have looked at this question in my blog on Possessive apostrophes: when do you need them? but it is worth looking at in more detail, as it is one of the trickier areas of grammar. It is also one where the answer is sometimes not clear, but can either be illogical or even open

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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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