1st vs 3rd person in report writing

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calimich said:
another potential controversial question...

which font y'all use?
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Times New Roman for VA, although I copy and paste into CPRS, so it then changes to that system's font (which I believe is the equivalent of Courier).

I'd actually have to check what I use for non-VA reports. I think it might be Arial...?
 
Where do you all stand on the use of just an apostrophe or apostrophe-s for possessives with names ending in "s" (e.g., "Luis' toy" vs. "Luis's toy")? What if the name ends in a silent "z" (there are a LOT of terminal-z female names within the primary culture of the majority of my clients, so this comes up a lot). Style guides seems to differ.
 
ClinicalABA said:
Where do you all stand on the use of just an apostrophe or apostrophe-s for possessives with names ending in "s" (e.g., "Luis' toy" vs. "Luis's toy")? What if the name ends in a silent "z" (there are a LOT of terminal-z female names within the primary culture of the majority of my clients, so this comes up a lot). Style guides seems to differ.
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I don’t mind Luis’. Luis’s seems superfluous.
 
borne_before said:
I don’t mind Luis’. Luis’s seems superfluous.
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While I concur, APA Style 6th edition does not! Possessive of singular nouns are formed with "-'s", even if they end with "s". I've seen some exceptions listed online for when the possessive isn't pronounced differently (such as in Socrates').

It's all too much to think about! I'm still not used to single spacing between sentences. It's just so automatic to hit that space bar twice.
 
ClinicalABA said:
While I concur, APA Style 6th edition does not! Possessive of singular nouns are formed with "-'s", even if they end with "s". I've seen some exceptions listed online for when the possessive isn't pronounced differently (such as in Socrates').

It's all too much to think about! I'm still not used to single spacing between sentences. It's just so automatic to hit that space bar twice.
Click to expand...

Haha, I use a single space between sentences, but still see plenty of notes that use double.

For apostrophes with last names ending in -s, I add the apostrophe and s (i.e., Jones's) rather than just the apostrophe. In my mind, it makes it easier to see, so it makes it more readable. It also makes it easier when using templates to just find/replace text rather than also needing to worry about fixing any apostrophe mistakes.

This, of course, is counter to everything I learned in English classes growing up. It looked really weird when I first started it, but I'm now used to it.
 
ClinicalABA said:
While I concur, APA Style 6th edition does not! Possessive of singular nouns are formed with "-'s", even if they end with "s". I've seen some exceptions listed online for when the possessive isn't pronounced differently (such as in Socrates').

It's all too much to think about! I'm still not used to single spacing between sentences. It's just so automatic to hit that space bar twice.
Click to expand...
This ain't research man, APA should step back. I'm not gonna let a bunch of bureaucratic non-clinical "psychologists" bloats tell me how to write.
 
AcronymAllergy said:
Times New Roman for VA, although I copy and paste into CPRS, so it then changes to that system's font (which I believe is the equivalent of Courier).

I'd actually have to check what I use for non-VA reports. I think it might be Arial...?
Click to expand...

Just be careful of those fancy quotation marks and apostrophes that don't transfer over! I had to once re-add all of them into CPRS.

ClinicalABA said:
Where do you all stand on the use of just an apostrophe or apostrophe-s for possessives with names ending in "s" (e.g., "Luis' toy" vs. "Luis's toy")? What if the name ends in a silent "z" (there are a LOT of terminal-z female names within the primary culture of the majority of my clients, so this comes up a lot). Style guides seems to differ.
Click to expand...

I always use apostrophe-s because it's technically the proper grammar (although I have gotten less prescriptivist over the years).
 
cara susanna said:
Just be careful of those fancy quotation marks and apostrophes that don't transfer over! I had to once re-add all of them into CPRS.
Click to expand...
To this day, I don't fully understand why CPRS does this for some characters but not others. Meaning, it'll occasionally balk at a single apostrophe but not any others. It also loves doing this for the elongated dashes that Word auto-creates when you type "--"

Also, has anyone else noticed that CPRS seems to sporadically have wider or narrower margins for some notes? I'll can put the same data table into two different reports--one will format fine while the other seems to run out of line width, even if the pasted information is identical.
 
ClinicalABA said:
Where do you all stand on the use of just an apostrophe or apostrophe-s for possessives with names ending in "s" (e.g., "Luis' toy" vs. "Luis's toy")? What if the name ends in a silent "z" (there are a LOT of terminal-z female names within the primary culture of the majority of my clients, so this comes up a lot). Style guides seems to differ.
Click to expand...
Always Luis's
 
WisNeuro said:
Who gives a f@%* about an Oxford Comma?

Saw that concert back in the Before Times.
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Off topic, but way back in the Before the Before Times, me and my kids would have "Papa's Dance Parties" where I'd play my music and we'd march around banging spoons on pots and such. Vampire Weekend was in heavy rotation. One day, after dancing around to Oxford Comma, my 3 y.o. sons says to me "papa- there's a bad word in that song." I'm thinking "uh-oh" and ask him what he's talking about. He then says "they said 'dumb'". I was a bit relieved!
 
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I’m really liking Calibri—crisp and clear. It’s my default font in Word and I use it when writing up things that aren’t for my job. However, my practice management software uses some other font; not sure off hand what it is.

Times New Roman is my default for reports to be read by others. Purely out of tradition/habit.
 
AcronymAllergy said:
Just tried that and kind of like it. It might just be my monitor/screen guard, but I wonder if it's harder for some folks to read vs. others (e.g., Times New Roman, Arial)?
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I do change it to 12.5, and justified, which I think helps. I've been spending waaaay too much formatting documents recently......

Edited to add I'm now at font size 13. Also, hear good things about Book Antiqua.
 
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foreverbull said:
I’m really liking Calibri—crisp and clear. It’s my default font in Word and I use it when writing up things that aren’t for my job. However, my practice management software uses some other font; not sure off hand what it is.

Times New Roman is my default for reports to be read by others. Purely out of tradition/habit.
Click to expand...

Calibri is my go to! Not that I get to choose my font in CPRS, but for Word report drafts I use it.
 
TNR or Arial for me... I guess you could call me old fashioned, but I prefer to think of it as classic.
 
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