I'm a grammar girl here.

Hi, I'm Injuan Fogredi and this week I have a click and dirty tip about numbers and parentheses.

A meaty middle about using missing commas to get out of parking tickets.

And a tidbit about whether the minions are speaking a real language.

Before we get to the click and dirty tip, I have a correction from last week.

In the segment on last names, I said that last names are sometimes called Christian names.

And that isn't true.

Christian name is another term for a first name, not a last name.

Sorry.

And now onto this week's tip.

Two readers recently asked whether they need to repeat a number in parentheses after they write out the word.

If you were looking at the transcript of this podcast,

you'd see that I did not put the numeral two in parentheses after the word two when I wrote about the two readers.

I just wrote the word two.

Putting the number in parentheses after the word is unnecessary and no style guide that I'm aware of calls for it.

It has a sense of legal use to it, but from what I can tell, it's not even required in legal writing anymore.

Garner's Modern American usage says it was originally done in legal writing to prevent fraudulent alterations.

I guess if you had both the word and the numeral to alter, it would be harder than if you just had one of the other to alter.

So that's why you see it sometimes.

The number in parentheses after the word is a relic of legal writing, but it's not something you need to include in your writing today.

And that was your quick and dirty tip.

On to our piece about the parking ticket.

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