Sunday, December 11, 2011

Elongated yellow safety restraint

The people in the first motor vehicle?

Neither of them were wearing their seatbelts, according to the highway patrol report.

And in the second?

Rippee was using her safety restraint, while Kitchens was not, according to the highway patrol.

Unless "seatbelt" goes behind a paywall after the first 15 uses a month, it's hard to see why "safety restraint" made its appearance here.

If house style calls for making the Kansas Highway Patrol into "the highway patrol" on second reference, by the way, house style should be reconsidered. Shortened versions of proper names are still proper names; if you're John Jacob Jingleheimer Smith in the eyes of the DMV and the draft board, you're still Jake Smith, not jake smith, in the news columns. The Kansas Highway Patrol, the Highway Patrol, the agency. Clear?

And thanks to the Elongated Yellow Fruit Bureau for the tip.

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3 Comments:

Anonymous Terry Collmann said...

The Kansas Highway Patrol, the Highway Patrol, the agency. Clear?

No, sorry, couldn't disagree more. Rules for personal names are not automatically to be applied to names of organisations. You can divide a person's name up into shorter elements that are still their name. The highway patrol is what it is. It's a description. The Kansas Highway Patrol is what its name is. And even if that's not a sufficient argument, what about Omit Needless Capitalisation?

9:37 AM, December 21, 2011  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

there's an agreement issue here too: "neither.. was." i would've probably have written "neither of them was wearing a seatbelt."

"Neither of them were wearing their seatbelts, according to the highway patrol report."

10:08 AM, February 02, 2013  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

there's an agreement issue here too: "neither..was."

Neither of them were wearing their seatbelts, according to the highway patrol report.

Neither of them was wearing a seatbelt....

Neither of them had a seatbelt on....

10:19 AM, February 02, 2013  

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