Month: March 2009

Use low precision with percentages in telephone calls.

General

I was on a conference call yesterday in which a woman was reporting the results of a survey.

She said something to the effect that 78.23% of those surveyed had chosen “X”.

The four-digit percentage struck me as overkill.

There are two problems with reporting a percentage such as “78.23%” on a telephone call, in a podcast, or on the radio.

  1. Numbers generally are difficult to follow when the audience can only listen to the numbers (and cannot see the numbers, too).
  2. Higher-precision numbers are more difficult to follow than are lower-precision numbers.

Sure, higher-precision numbers (such as “78.23%”) sound more authoritative than do lower-precision numbers (such as “78%”).

But better communication often means simpler communication.

So take a load off your listeners when you next give an oral report: Report percentages as one- or two-digit numbers instead as three- or four-digit numbers.

An apostrophe to the rescue!

Apostrophes, Possessives

A few years ago I noticed something odd about the television ads, billboards, and signs for the Church’s Chicken restaurant chain.

The logo read “Churchs Chicken” without the required possessive apostrophe between the name “Church” and the letter “s”.

Here is an example of the apostrophe-less logo used by Church’s Chicken up until just a few years ago:

The absence of the apostrophe bugged me but also made me wonder whether the company was omitting the apostrophe for some sort of branding or legal reason.

For example, many trademark experts recommend against using possessives in brand names — and definitely against using a brand name (such as “Kodak”) as a possessive noun (such as “Kodak’s”).

Well the folks at Church’s Chicken apparently realized that the apostrophe-less logo was actually a mistake.

For example, here is an older logo that I found for Church’s Chicken:

As you can see, the older logo did have the apostrophe.

And here is how the Church’s Chicken logo appears at this writing — again with the possessive apostrophe:

So the restaurant chain had the possessive apostrophe, dropped it (for who knows why), and re-added it.

Thank you, Church’s Chicken, for saving the apostrophe!