[General] Got Covid test

[Silverobama]

A friend of mine came back from abroad and was quarantined for 14 days here in my city. He received six times of Covid test, every two to three days.

I wrote two sentences about his experience of getting tests.

1) They tested him six times within two weeks.
2) He got Covid test six times within two weeks.

Are the italic sentences natural?

 

[GoesStation]

Number one is okay, but you probably mean in six weeks.

Number two is missing an article, uses the wrong preposition, and incorrectly capitalizes "covid".

Your friend received the covid test six times.

 

[emsr2d2]

A friend of mine came back from abroad and was quarantined for 14 days here in my city. He [STRIKE]received[/STRIKE] underwent a total of six [STRIKE]times of[/STRIKE] Covid tests, being tested every two to three days.

I wrote two sentences about his experience of getting tests.

1) They tested him six times within two weeks. :tick: Unlike GS, I have no problem with "within" there.
2) He got/had [STRIKE]Covid test[/STRIKE] six [STRIKE]times[/STRIKE] Covid tests within two weeks.

Are the italic sentences natural?

Please see my amendments above.

Rightly or wrongly, most people in the UK write either "Covid" or "COVID".

 

[jutfrank]

and incorrectly capitalizes "covid".

I'm curious to know what you see as incorrect about capitalising this word.

 

[emsr2d2]

"I fell into happy correspondence the weekend before last with a medical specialist who wanted to know why the media was “incorrectly” spelling COVID-19 as Covid-19. I explained that, like most British newspapers, the Guardian’s style is to use uppercase for abbreviations that are written and spoken as a collection of letters, such as BBC, IMF and NHS, whereas acronyms pronounced as words go upper and lower, eg Nasa, Unicef and, now, Covid-19. The reader was remarkably understanding given that her query turned out to be more than passing curiosity: she was busily correcting scientific articles by authors who’d adopted the media’s style. We each apologised for having caused the other work and moved on better informed about our respective fields."

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/comment...vid-pedantry-national-crisis-spelling-grammar

As you can see, according to the medical specialist, it should always be COVID-19.

 

[GoesStation]

I'm curious to know what you see as incorrect about capitalising this word.

On further reflection, I have to say it's fine.

 

[Phaedrus]

Rightly or wrongly, most people in the UK write either "Covid" or "COVID".

The New Yorker, my favorite magazine in the U.S. from the standpoint of writing and punctuation, uses small caps for acronyms like COVID, SARS, and NAFTA. (For initialisms, like F.B.I. and U.C.L.A., it uses normal caps, with periods separating the letters.) I like the small-caps approach to punctuating acronyms, but, unfortunately, small caps are impossible to use in some contexts, such as online grammar forums.

 

[emsr2d2]

I don't even know what small caps are! Of course, I can imagine what they are, but I don't think I've ever seen them used in any publication.

 

[GoesStation]

The New Yorker maintains some old-fashioned but sensible usages rarely seen elsewhere. My favorite is the diaeresis in words like naïve and coöperate. They also preserve the circumflex in rôle, or they used to. That seems rather pointless to me.

 

[Phaedrus]

I don't even know what small caps are! Of course, I can imagine what they are, but I don't think I've ever seen them used in any publication.

The earliest small-caps convention that I am aware of is in the spelling of the word "Lord" in the King James Bible (1611). If you have a printed copy, look at how that word is written; it will probably be in small caps. Online versions seem to use normal caps ("LORD"). Here is an example of a New Yorker article with small caps for COVID.

Like GoesStation, I don't always go along with New Yorker punctuation. For example, I don't write teen-ager or per cent. I write teenager and percent.

 

[Tdol]

All-caps may be scientific, even small ones, but it's still shouting to me. It's Covid-19 to me.