The goal of any writer should be making something that is clear for the reader, not ease of typing for the writer, which although quite common, is really just a form a selfishness. If writing 20th might look like a typo for writing loth or moth, you certainly want to avoid that. Do 10th, 20th, loth, both look much the same? If so, you may wish ...

Aug 23, 2014 · I would regard the "nd" in "second" as a suffix on the number "3", like the "th" in "20th". For example, I would suggest that "VIP" [Very Important Person] is made plural by adding a "-s" suffix, even though the resultant phrase [Very Important People] doesn't contain the letter "s" anywhere within it. –

Feb 15, 2017 · century Lowercase, spelling out numbers less than ten: the first century, the 20th century. From The Chicago Manual of Style, fifteenth edition (2003): 9.36 Centuries. Particular centuries are spelled out and lowercased. [Examples:] the twenty-first century; the eighth and ninth centuries; the eighteen hundreds (the nineteenth century)

Aug 28, 2014 · If, in a contract fr example, the text reads: "X has to finish the work by MM-DD-YYYY", does the "by" include the date or exclude it? In other words, will the work delivered on the specified date

Dec 9, 2010 · By most definitions, the date changes at midnight. That is, at the precise stroke of 12:00:00. That time, along with 12:00:00 noon, are technically neither AM or PM because AM and PM mean "ante-meridiem" and "post-meridiem", and noon and midnight are neither ante- nor post- meridiem.

Mar 5, 2013 · Although, by definition, “before Tuesday” actually means “by Monday at the latest”, many people still confuse “by” (up to AND including) and “before” (up to BUT excluding).

Sep 17, 2014 · I am always confused when I get an email stating "out of office until Thursday". Is the sender back on Thursday or still out of office (o.o.o.) on Thursday and only back on Friday?

Apr 17, 2017 · I've never known "nineteen hundreds" to mean anything but the 20th century. I come from a Computer Science background, so I understand why logically it would seem to be "nineteen hundreds" --> 1900-1909, "nineteen hundred and tens" --> 1910-1919, etc., but I haven't heard it used to refer only to 1900-1909.

Dec 5, 2013 · FWIW, when I was taught (by History teachers) to take lecture notes as a VIth Form A-level student in Britain in the 1970s, we were taught the abbreviation "C12th" etc. as a standard usage (optionally with the C larger than and partially enclosing the number).

Aug 16, 2011 · This is not good English. Either it was written by somebody for whom English is not a native language, in which case I wouldn't necessarily conclude anything about his interpretation from the text, or it was written in a hurry by someone who meant to put (you have until 18 August) in parentheses, in which you should deliver it by 23:59 on 18 August.