166 Essential Skills for Health Careers Success
• Capitalize titles that come before personal names.
Examples: Ms., Dr., Offi cer Johnson
• Capitalize abbreviations for academic degrees and other professional
designations that follow names.
Examples: Jacob White, LPN; Jessie Parks, RN, BSN, MSN
• Do not capitalize seasons.
Examples: fall, winter, spring, summer
Writing Numbers
As in all aspects of grammar, there are rules for expressing numbers as
fi gures or words. Number guidelines are not as widely agreed upon as rules
for punctuation and capitalization. The guidelines listed below should be
used for general writing. If you are writing a research paper or an article for
publication, fi nd out if there are written number guidelines you must follow.
General guidelines for writing numbers include
• Numbers one through nine should be spelled out with words.
Numerals should be used for the number ten and anything greater.
Examples: One supervisor and three workers were needed to
solve the problem.
The health unit coordinator ordered 25 black ink pens.
• Use words for numbers that are indefi nite or approximate.
Examples: About twenty people applied for the job.
There were approximately ten thousand new cases of tuberculosis
last year.
Figure 7.20 State abbreviations are composed of two capital letters without periods.
State Abbreviations
Alabama AL Hawaii HI Massachusetts MA New Mexico NM South Dakota SD
Alaska AK Idaho ID Michigan MI New York NY Tennessee TN
Arizona AZ Illinois IL Minnesota MN North Carolina NC Texas TX
Arkansas AR Indiana IN Mississippi MS North Dakota ND Utah UT
California CA Iowa IA Missouri MO Ohio OH Vermont VT
Colorado CO Kansas KS Montana MT Oklahoma OK Virginia VA
Connecticut CT Kentucky KY Nebraska NE Oregon OR Washington WA
Delaware DE Louisiana LA Nevada NV Pennsylvania PA West Virginia WV
Florida FL Maine ME New Hampshire NH Rhode Island RI Wisconsin WI
Georgia GA Maryland MD New Jersey NJ South Carolina SC Wyoming WY