All about Words: holiday reading, writing about currency

Holiday reading

Every year, the Grattan Institute in Australia, sends the prime minister six books to read over the holidays. This year, the prime minister received:

• From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage, Judith Brett (Text Publishing, 2019)
• Kindred, Kate Legge (Melbourne University Publishing, 2019)
• Order without Design, Alain Bertaud (MIT Press, 2018)
• The Strange Death of Tory Economic Thinking, Stian Westlake (Medium.com, 2019)
• See What You Made Me Do, Jess Hill (Black Inc., 2019)
• The Testaments, Margaret Atwood (Vintage, 2019)

Other reading recommendations:

• The books we loved in 2019, Sydney Morning Herald
• Bernardine Evaristo, Lee Child and more pick the best books of 2019, The Guardian
• The 10 best books of 2019, The New York Times
• The best books of 2019, The Wall Street Journal
• 10 short stories by 10 big authors, Sydney Morning Herald
• 5 books to enjoy, GatesNotes

I plan to read:

• The Dutch House, Ann Patchett
• Stay With Me, Ayobami Adebayo
• Olive, Again, Elizabeth Strout
• The weekend, Charlotte Wood

I mainly read fiction, so any nonfiction recommendations would be welcome.

What’s on your holiday reading list?

Read my writing and grammar resources

Don’t have time to do an online course? Then why not buy one of my guides?

• Punctuation Guide (PDF, AUD 19.95)
• Grammar Guide (PDF, AUD 19.95)
• Sentence Guide (PDF, AUD 19.95)
• emails@work (PDF, AUD 19.95)

And if you write board papers, read my book, Write to Govern: How to write effective board papers (AUD 34.95 + postage)

Most opened articles in my newsletter this year

The following articles received the most opens this year:

• Adding information in sentences
• 13 tweets on business writing
• Steven Pinker’s 13 writing tips
• Singular or plural verbs with ‘one of us’
• Comma splices and run-on sentences
• Merriam-Webster vocab test

A little bit of grammar and style

It seemed odd sending a newsletter without a little bit of grammar!

Practice versus practise
I received a question about practice versus practise. I’ve written about this before, but in brief, in Australian, New Zealand and British usage, practice is a noun and practise a verb.

Writing about currency
I thought about how we write currency because I’ve been updating my website (still a work in progress). I’ve written about currency before too, but I wonder if styles are changing in online writing. I used to use A$, US$, NZ$ etc. rather than the international symbols AUD, USD or NZD because this style is recommended by the Australian Commonwealth Style manual. I never used the media version of $A, $US or $NZ.

What I am noticing online is a preference for the international symbols. When referencing this style, Style manual does not have a space after the symbol (AUD100), but I think most online sites do (AUD 100) because the space makes the number stand out more. I am also seeing the symbol after the number (100 AUD).

What I don’t like is the dollar repeated, for instance, $AUD 100, and this is quite common.

What do you think? (I am choosing AUD 100).

Quote of the month

‘Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.’
American author Diane Duane