Mistakes Danes make in English (part II)

We see Danes make the same mistakes in English time and time again. Are you guilty of any of these?

Managing director Mr. Jens Jensen, MBA, will not be in the office for the rest of the week.

On tuesday, the danish contingent will lead a talk on language in Copenhagen.
We will be discussing grammatical issues and language trends among other things.

Get it right

1. What’s in a title?
Danes often put job titles and academic credentials next to a person’s name where a native English speaker would leave them out.

Managing director Mr. Jens Jensen, MBA, will not be in the office for the rest of the week.

The key is to only choose one or leave them out altogether. So decide which is most important in the context, if any, and use that.

Managing director Jens Jensen will not be in the office for the rest of the week.

2. Capitals
English uses capitals where Danish doesn’t. A Dane may write:

On tuesday, the danish contingent will lead a talk on language in Copenhagen.

In English, capitals are always used for:

Days
Months
Nationalities and national adjectives
So the sentence should look like this:

On Tuesday, the Danish contingent will lead a talk on language in Copenhagen.

3. Hedging your bets
Danes write ‘among other things’ far more than a native speaker of English would.

We will be discussing grammatical issues and language trends among other things.

A much more concise way of writing this is to use 'such as'.

We will be discussing many topics such as grammatical issues and language trends.

Related articles:
Mistakes Danes make in English (Part I)