Punctuation lost and found on the newswire

JUNE CASAGRANDE

Ever surf to one of the paid newswires and just sit around reading

press releases?

Oh. You don’t? That would be weird, you say?

Well, then neither do I. What kind of demento would spend an

afternoon doing something like that?

But, hypothetically speaking, if we did we engage in such bizarre

behavior, we might encounter examples of the some of the more common

quirks of business writers. (I know this only because I used to work

for one of these wires and certainly not because I suffer from some

form of brain damage that would make one want to read these press

releases just for fun.)

Take, for instance, this excerpt from an FTI Consulting press

release on PR Newswire: “Results from continuing operations for the

quarter include the contribution from its August 31, 2002 acquisition

... .”

Ah, that takes me back -- back to the days of wanting to yell at

people, “Don’t you know what commas are for?”

For some reason, many, many corporate press releases denote dates

with a comma after the day of the month, but no comma after the year.

It’s often useful to think of a comma as a pause. The above

phrase, read aloud, would thus include a deep breath and pause right

before “2002,” making it sound like the beginning of a new sentence.

And that’s just silly.

The month, in this case, should be abbreviated. Here’s the rule

for standard newswriting style, which differs from book style, by the

way. This rule sounds arbitrary until you get used to it. If you’re

naming the month without a specific date, spell out the whole month.

“In November, I will eat much turkey.” For a specific date, the

longer months should be abbreviated. “By the end of the day on Nov.

27, I will curse the inventor of the gelatin dish known as ambrosia.”

Abbreviate all months except the ones with the shortest names:

March, April, May, July and, most notably, June. Think of them as the

warm and lovely ones that are perfect as-is.

But I digest. Back to the FTI release: I noticed another common

mistake. In one place, it says that the company “reported results for

the third quarter ended September 30, 2003,” which is the right way

to denote “third quarter” here. But later, the release mentions the

company’s “third quarter results.” In the second instance, “third

quarter” should be hyphenated. Why, you ask? Because in this case,

it’s a modifier. In other words, it’s acting like an adjective to the

noun “results.”

I know it’s easy to see “third quarter” looking all pretty and

perfect without a hyphen in the first instance, then just naturally

assume that it doesn’t require a hyphen in the next instance. But

that doesn’t explain why, a few paragraphs later, the author of the

press release suddenly regained a grasp of the subject, referring to

“the receipt of certain third-party consents.”

OK, I don’t know what that means, either. But I know that, this

time at least, the author got the hyphenation right.

Now who’s crazy?

* JUNE CASAGRANDE covers Newport Beach and John Wayne Airport. She

may be reached at (949) 574-4232 or by e-mail at june.casagrande

@latimes.com.