STAR TS Translation Services Blog

If you are struggling to choose which female honorific is the most appropriate to address the modern woman, be sure that you are not the only one. It is not an easy question.

Below we have detailed an explanation of Mrs., Ms., and Miss that should help you to address ladies correctly.

The three nouns Mrs., Ms., and Miss appeared in the 17th century and come from the female English title Mistress which was used to refer to all women. The full stop of the abbreviations is generally used in the USA and Canada whereas in the UK the abbreviations are commonly written without any full stop.

Ms. is slightly old fashioned compared to the two other titles but has been revived in the 20th century.  This English honorific is mostly used in business and public life to address a lady. This is generally used when her marital status is unknown. It is neutral regarding marital status. The plural for Ms. can be  Mss. or either Mses.. You may also use the French plural “Mesdames” abbreviated Mmes.

Miss is used to refer to an unmarried woman, or girls under eighteen in some countries. Miss alone is frequently used by schoolchildren to address a female teacher no matter what her marital status is. The plural for Miss is Misses or you may use the traditional French “Mesdemoiselles”.

Finally, Mrs. is strictly used to refer to a married woman. For the plural you can use the French plural “Mesdames” abbreviated Mmes like for Ms.

Some women may have a preference for Ms., Miss, or Mrs. and if a woman has a professional title, it is more appropriate to use that title such as Doctor, Professor, or Captain instead of Ms., Miss, or Mrs.

So what is your favorite Mrs., Ms., and Miss?

STAR Translation Services

English is one of the most spoken languages in the world. Just how good are we in using it though? Most of the time we’re all really good, but there are a few words that just drive us all mad and we constantly mix them up.

As we proofread documents we come across a lot of common misunderstandings in the use of certain English words.

Here is a little infographic we designed to help eliminate some of the common errors we come across everyday.

Did we miss anything? Drop us a line with your favourite errors.

How good are you?

Infographic - 7 common English mistakes

STAR Translation Services provides proofreading services in multiple languages.

This short English grammar lesson will help you to choose correctly between “who’s” and “whose”.

• “Who’s” is the contracted form of who is or less commonly who has.

Example: “Who’s working today?” can also be written like this “Who is working today?”

• “Whose” is the possessive form of who. It means “of whom” or “belonging to whom”.

Examples: “Whose translation is this?”

We find the easiest way to deal with contractions is that when you see the ‘s just expand it in your head. It’s the same with “its and it’s”. When you expand and read it in your head it’s much easier to decide which word is correct.

Did you know that STAR provides English proofreading services to our clients? People think of translation companies as only doing “foreign language” work. We can actually proofread any language and English is one of them

STAR Translation Services

Among or Between?

Easy guide rule is…

Between = Two
Among = Many

“Between” would be used for two elements and “among” would be used for three or more elements.
We use “among” when something is in a group or a crowd of people and we use “between” when it’s two things.

Examples:

• They discussed the issue “among” the group, or, let them talk “among” themselves.

• They bought the house “between” them, or, I will be able to choose “Between” French and Italian for my first language to study.

Some people would use both “among” and “between” about two people and they could use it for three and more people depending on how they write or say it.

Is there a space before a question mark?

In English, there is no space between the last word of a sentence and the question mark.

Thus, you will write:

How are you?

The rules differ from one language to another that’s why translators are constantly careful when translating.  In French or in Portuguese, it is required to add a space between the last word of a question and the question mark.  So, in French you will write:

Comment allez-vous ?

In Portuguese, you can write:

Foi brilhante !

This rule is applied with the exclamation mark as well.

By STAR Translation Services

“Its” or “It’s”?

The dreaded contraction! Whilst it looks hard this is a relatively simple question to answer.

It’s

It’s is the contraction of it is or it has.

Example:

It is always a pleasure to help you.

It’s always a pleasure to help you.

Its

“Its” is the possessive form.

Example:

John is ready to help the company grow its business.

I find the best way to ensure you are using the correct one is to expand “it’s” to “it is” and read it out loud. If it sounds correct you are correct. Its it sounds wrong use the other one.

What grammar question would you love to ask us?

By STAR Translation Services

STAR’s Monday Question : Is it “Data” or “Datum”?

Data comes from Latin. It used to be considered as a collective singular noun. In formal documents for scientific or scholarly writing data is mostly used as a plural and datum is the singular form. When you choose one or the other check that the nouns and verbs tally with the selected form.

Yet, for non-scientific use data is nowadays commonly used as a singular noun. So it is acceptable to write a sentence like: “STAR’s Translation’s data was available on its website”.

Definition

“data n, pl. 1 Facts on which a decision is to be based. 2 Facts to be processed by computer.
datum n. (pl. data) item of data”
Reference: Oxford Quick Reference Dictionary and Thesaurus – Oxford University Press

In addition, here are a few more words whose the plural form don’t ends in -s.

Plural >>>>>>>Singular

Bacteria                   Bacterium

Dice                           Die

Formulae                Formula

Graffiti                      Graffito

Candelabra            Candelabrum

Data                          Datum

Media                       Medium

Opera                       Opius

Paparazzi                Paparazzo

Men                          Man

Women                   Woman

By STAR Translation Services

Among or Amongst ?

We are often asked what the difference is between two words and which is most appropriate for a given text.

So this Monday our question is: Among or Amongst, which is correct?

For once it is an easy answer: You can actually use both of them. Either “amongst” and “among” is correct.

“Among” seems to be more appropriate and popular in modern writing. Indeed, when writing news “among” appears the most used one.

On the other hand, you can use amongst when writing fiction like fairytales.  It is a bit old-fashioned so it suits the context and style of fictional stories.

By STAR Translation Services

Dr or Dr. ?

What is the correct abbreviation for Doctor?

Doctor comes from the Latin word Doctor. The word originates from the Latin verb docere which means “to teach”.

This week we are having a big debate about this one and we’re still not decided who won? There are multiple camps in this space.

Camp 1:

Either Abbreviations “Dr” or “Dr.” can be used to designate a person who has doctorate-level degree.

Camp 2:

Only Dr. is correct as it is an abbreviation. You should always use the period.

In the UK is appears to be ok to use either Dr or Dr. However in America the defacto is to always use the period. So it is Dr. in America.

Just for fun consider this…

The plural of “Dr.” is “Drs.” or “Dres.” in some languages (German).

In British English you don’t have to indicate an abbreviation with a full stop after the abbreviation, when the last letter is the same as the abbreviated word. So you can use Dr Smith, because ‘r’ is the last letter of “Doctor”. However if he had a Phd. you have to use a period because the last letter is different from the entire word “…. doctorate”

It is the opposite in North American English. So the abbreviation of Doctor is generally “Dr” in most of the Commonwealth whereas it is “Dr.” in North America.

Source : Wikipedia

by STAR Translation Services

Share your point of view with us -  Which abbreviation do you use and why?

The following information provides a list of suffixes which are common to the English language.

Suffixes are added to the end of a word to change its meaning.  Common Suffix word endings are:

-ant                                -ise                           -ful

-ent                                -ist                            -ness

-ible                               -fy                             -ism

-ing                                -ly                              -ment

- ize                              -able                          -ation

Adding a suffix may change the spelling of the preceding word. If a word ends in a y that is preceded by a consonant (happy, Beauty), the y changes to i:

happy               happiness

beauty             beautiful

But if the y is preceded by a vowel, the y remains: I envy your enjoyment of the situation.  It obviously caused you much merriment. And if the original word ends in an e, this is usually dropped: You are the most lovable but not at all sensible.