How COVID Changed the Way We Think About Words. How to Write Dates. Prefeed.
Grammar Girl: For Writers and Language Lovers.
Mignon Fogarty, Inc.
4.5 • 2.9K Ratings
🗓️ 3 January 2023
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
909. In honor of 2023, we’ll talk about writing dates. And then we talk about a fascinating study about how COVID has changed the way we think about certain words.
| Transcript: https://grammar-girl.simplecast.com/episodes/writing-dates/transcript
COVID Words Segment
- Written by Valerie Fridland.
- Reference: Kleinman D, Morgan AM, Ostrand R, Wittenberg E (2022) Lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on language processing. PLoS ONE 17(6): e0269242.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Grab a girl here. I'm Minion Fogarty and you can think of me as your friendly guide to |
| 0:10.5 | the English language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff. Today, |
| 0:16.9 | we'll talk about writing dates, and then about a fascinating study about how COVID has changed |
| 0:22.4 | the way we think about certain words. Can you believe it's already 2023? I feel like I hadn't even |
| 0:33.6 | gotten used to calling it 2022 yet, but another year is gone, and since a new year gets people |
| 0:40.1 | thinking about the date, I'll answer a few date-related questions. Here's a question from a long |
| 0:46.4 | time ago from a listener named Michael to get us started. It'll seem like he's getting a little |
| 0:51.2 | off track, but it'll all make sense in a minute. Grammar, girl, I have some concerns regarding the |
| 0:57.8 | correct grammar for wedding invitations and wedding announcements. My fiancee and I have two main |
| 1:03.6 | questions. The first regarding a year, a year such as 2007, often written as 2007. We both believe |
| 1:12.1 | this to be grammatically incorrect yet prevalent among examples that we've seen in print. Our second |
| 1:18.3 | question is regarding the use of British English in the states. We live stateside, and yet we see |
| 1:24.0 | in these examples many words written in the British spelling versus an American spelling, |
| 1:29.9 | and we don't know what to do. Thank you for your help. |
| 1:34.4 | The reason Michael's question about British English in wedding invitations is relevant to how to |
| 1:39.6 | pronounce dates is that as a general rule, the year is pronounced 2000 and 23 in Britain and 2023 |
| 1:48.6 | in America. That's the general rule. It's quite common to hear people use the end in the United |
| 1:54.1 | States. Although from the number of email messages I get complaining about it, I'd say a lot of |
| 1:59.2 | Americans have been taught that it's wrong. So back to Michael's question, I believe the reason you |
| 2:05.6 | see the year written is 2000 and 23 in wedding invitations is the same reason you see the other |
| 2:12.0 | British spellings on invitations. Americans tend to think British English sounds more formal, |
| 2:18.4 | and they want their invitations to sound special. Some people may consider it an affectation, |
... |
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