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Simon asks,

I am trying to find information on the use of the sign '&' to replace 'and' in English. When is it acceptable to use this sign? I understood that it could only be used for Proper Nouns, eg. the name of a company 'Fox & Sons Ltd.' but never in a normal sentence such as 'this fees & charges handbook specifies the procedures to be followed.' I'd be happy to know what the rule is.

The ampersand (&) comes from an alteration of and per se and, & (the sign) by itself (means) and. The Associated Press Stylebook says that you should use it when it is part of a company's formal name, but never simply in place of and. Simon seems to have understood correctly.

A couple people have asked me recently about when to use figures for numbers (e.g. "25") and when to spell them out (e.g. "six").

One guideline is to spell out numbers one through nine and use figures for 10 or more. Another (the one I prefer) is to spell out numbers if they can be written as one or two words; otherwise, use figures. There are, however, exceptions to both rules:

• If a sentence begins with a number, either spell it out or rewrite the sentence with the number in a different position.
• Use figures for dates, addresses, percentages, fractions, decimals, scores, statistics, exact amounts of money, and the time.

Style guides disagree about whether you should maintain consistency within a sentence. Also, as Lunsford and Connors wisely note in The New St. Martin's Handbook, "Conventions for expressing numbers vary from field to field, and you will want to make sure you understand the conventions of your own field—and follow them closely."

Resources

• Capital Community College
• A Writer's Reference, Fifth Edition, by Diana Hacker
• The New St. Martin's Handbook by Andrea Lunsford and Robert Connors
• The Associated Press Stylebook

A reader asks:

When writing about a short story, do you underline the title of the story or do you use quotation marks around the title of the story?

Quotation Marks:

The most common way to mark a short story title is to enclose it in quotation marks. Titles of newspaper and magazine articles are also enclosed in quotation marks. Here are a few examples:

• "Bartleby the Scrivener" by Herman Melville
• "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor
• "Mommy Madness" by Judith Warner in Newsweek

Italics or Underlining:

Longer works—novels, magazines, newspapers, movies—are typically underlined or set in italic type. Although either is acceptable, I prefer italics, especially on the web, since an underlined word can be mistaken for a hyperlink.

• Moby Dick by Herman Melville
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Simpsons
• The New York Times

Extra Credit:

I'm not sure why, but The New Yorker puts quotation marks around everything, whether it's a short story or a novel or a television show. I suppose the most important thing is internal consistency. If you use italics for one novel's title, use italics for every novel's title; don't switch to quotation marks or underlining halfway through an article, or even in a different article of the same publication.

Any questions? Post them in the comment form, and I'll answer them as promptly as I can.