#IS CANNOT ONE WORD OR TWO AP STYLE SOFTWARE#

Figures, numerals, dimensions (7-year-old boy three years ago 1 percent third grade size 9 6-by-8-foot rug 5 ounces 68,000-square-foot facility.).Q: Should the names of decades be capitalized when written out?Ī: Use Arabic figures to indicate decades of history: the 1920s, the '80s. Q: When referring to a time span, I never know when to use a dash to separate the two times (ex. Q: Great Depression is capitalized and so is American Revolution. Q: Why is atheist not capitalized while Catholics, Muslims, Buddhists, etc., are?Ī: We follow Webster's on that term, which is lowercase. Capitalization (proper nouns: America proper names: Democratic Party popular names: Indy 500 compositions: books, movies, operas.Q: In a news story, can you start a sentence with an acronym?Ī: A few examples: Radar, Laser, NATO, OPEC. Abbreviations, acronyms (24/7 NATO laser U.S.Here is a sampling of frequently asked questions, with examples of AP style used in answers. AP editor Paula Froke fields questions of widest interest posed by subscribers to the online AP Stylebook. Welcome to Ask the Editor, a forum on writing, style and phrasing issues that go beyond the pages of the AP Stylebook. Check out her New York Times best-seller “ Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing.Ask the Editor Frequently Asked Style Questions Mignon Fogarty is Grammar Girl and the founder of Quick and Dirty Tips. The contraction “can’t” is fine anywhere you’re comfortable using contractions, which are a little more informal than writing out all the words, and always remember to put the apostrophe in “can’t” when you are writing the contraction. Only use the two-word version, “can not,” when “can” and “not” just happen to fall next to each other in a sentence. So to sum up, “cannot” is the word you want most of the time. It has a lot of meanings, but for the most part, you’re not going to use most of them. Cant can also refer to talking like you are begging or whining. It can refer to jargon or a private language such as one spoken by gangsters or other underworld characters, as in The cant of mobsters obscures the violence of their exploits.

“Cant,” without the apostrophe, is a real word, but it’s uncommon. I probably should have asked, but we always had bigger fish to fry.

#IS CANNOT ONE WORD OR TWO AP STYLE SOFTWARE#

Mom said I can’t have the car tomorrow.ĭon’t use “can’t” where you would use the two-word version.Īlso, when I was a professor, I saw my students write “cant”-without an apostrophe-with surprising frequency when they meant to write “can’t,” the contraction for “cannot.” I don’t know if they were using voice recognition software and it was getting it wrong or what.

“Can’t,” the contraction for “cannot,” is just a more informal replacement for the one-word form of “cannot.”

You can not only have the car, but you can also get the car washed on your way home.

You can not only be in the play, but also choose your understudy.

“Can not” is occasionally used as an alternative to the one word “cannot,” but it shows up most often when the word “not” is just part of something that comes right after “can.” For example, use “can not,” (two words) when “not” is part of a “ not only … but also” construction.

Mom said I cannot have the car tomorrow.

Is cannot one word or two ap style