Everything to do with the Word ‘Century’ It isn’t just history students who will have to use the word ‘century’ in their writing, although admittedly it might crop up more often for them. Whether your essay is about Literature, Science or Engineering, it is likely that your analysis will look to the past in some way. The word ‘century’ might seem simple enough to use, but there are a few ways it might trip you up. The first is whether to write the century as a word or a number. ‘Eighteenth century’ or ‘18th century’? Although the general rule when writing numbers in an academic context is to spell them out below twelve, century numbers should always be spelled out as a word. Another thing to bear in mind is which century you are actually referring to. Anything which happened in the seventeenth century occurred during the 1600’s, anything in the twentieth century in the 1900’s and anything in the twenty-first century in the 2000’s. Remember that the number of the century refers to the previous one hundred years. Another problem that often crops up is the question of if, and when, to hyphenate. When you are using the compound phrase ‘eighteenth century’ as an adjective, it should be hyphenated and lower case: ‘This is an eighteenth-century vase’. When you are using the phrase ‘eighteenth century’ as a noun it should not be hyphenated: ‘This vase was made in the eighteenth century’. This general rule applies to most other compound phrases as well. If you’re using it as an adjective, hyphenate. If you’re using it as a noun, don’t hyphenate. The word should not be capitalised, so it always reads ‘century’ rather than ‘Century’. Finally, when making notes and revising, centuries can be written with an upper case ‘C’ before the relevant number, for example ‘C18th’. Just remember not to write it in this format in academic work! The post Everything to do with the Word ‘Century’ appeared first on ProofreadMyEssays academic blog. ift.tt/1A0NQcb
Posted on: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 11:08:45 +0000
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