Rising Scholars

Sentence of the Week #19

By Barbara Gastel | Feb. 20, 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.

 

 

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