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Sentence of the Week #19

By Barbara Gastel | 13 February 2013

[From Michelle Yeoman and Barbara Gastel:]

Editing Solution: Last Week’s Sentence

Special thanks to those of you who commented on last week’s post. As a reminder, below is Sentence of the Week #18:

Dr. Lin is an associate professor in the Sociology Department.

The error in this sentence is the capitalization of Sociology Department, which should be lowercase. Thus, a possible solution reads as follows:

Dr. Lin is an associate professor in the sociology department.

Another solution is to use the official name of the department. In that case, the department name is capitalized:

Dr. Lin is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology.

Capitalize names of academic departments, colleges, and divisions when using the official name. (Example: “She works in the Division of Education and Human Development.”) Do not capitalize when using the informal or abbreviated name. (Example: “She works in the education division.”)

Please note that some department names contain proper nouns. Proper nouns name a specific person, place, or thing and should always be capitalized. In these cases, capitalize the proper noun but not the word department. (Example: “The new building will contain the Spanish department and the computer science department.”)

And now, onward to this week’s sentence.

Sentence of the Week #19

Welcome to the newest installment in this series. 

The sentence below has 1 definite error:

When writing a journal article, be sure to site references correctly.

Please correct the error, and submit the corrected sentence and any remarks as a comment on this post. We plan to provide and discuss the solution as a comment in about 2 days, as well as including it in the next Sentence of the Week post.

Do you have a sentence that you would like us to consider using as the Sentence of the Week? Please e-mail submissions to Michelle at msyeoman@gmail.com with the subject line “Sentence of the Week”. Submissions should be your own work—don’t nominate a colleague’s writing :). 

Please also feel free to e-mail suggestions relating to this series.

 

 

Sentence of the Week #19

Posted by ADEBAYO NATHANIEL ADEYEMI at 14 February 2013 06:40 AM

The correct sentence should read;
     When writing a journal article, be sure to cite
      references correctly.

I think I caught 'sight' of it.

Posted by Natasha Das at 14 February 2013 07:02 AM

'Site' is a place or location. 'Cite', on the other hand means 'to mention' or 'to quote'. The correct sentence is:

When writing a journal article, be sure to cite references correctly.

This Week's Solution

Posted by Barbara Gastel at 16 February 2013 06:06 AM

Here is this week's solution. We thank Michelle Yeoman for preparing it.

* * * * *

Special thanks to those of you who commented on the most recent post. As a reminder, here is Sentence of the Week #18: When writing a journal article, be sure to site references correctly.

The error in this sentence is the word site, which should be cite. Thus, the corrected sentence reads as follows: When writing a journal article, be sure to cite references correctly.

Site and cite are homonyms. As mentioned in previous posts, homonyms are words that sound the same but have different meanings. Site relates to location and is generally a noun. (Example: “The building site is near the highway.”) The verb cite, on the other hand, means to quote or reference. (Example: “This research article has been cited many times.”)

To remember the differences between these 2 homonyms, it may be helpful to note that cite is related to the noun citation. In academic settings, a citation is a reference to a scholarly work such as a book or article.