On to New Year's Wishes

If you--like me--have not yet mailed all your business and personal holiday greetings, you are probably too late for Hanukkah and Christmas. However, you--like me--are just in time to send New Year's greetings. (This thought sustains me.) So I wanted to help you with that tricky New Year's punctuation and capitalization.

These are correct:

• Happy New Year!
• We wish you a beautiful new year.
• Happy 2007!
• We look forward to working with you in the new year.

These also are correct:

• We send you New Year's wishes.
• We will see you New Year's Eve.
• On New Year's Day and every day, we wish you joy and happiness.

The point is that New Year's Day and New Year's Eve have apostrophes. Of course, New Year does not. And if you are referring to the holiday, it is capitalized: New Year's Day. But if you are simply referring to next year, it is not: in the new year. (Although "Happy New Year!" is standard.)

In December 2005, I wrote message templates for New Year's greetings. You can find them and other suggestions on New Year's greetings here.

Happy holidays! Happy New Year!

Until next year--week,

Lynn

Comments

[Patrick]

Lynn,

I wish you a happy New Year as well.
Thank you for all the educational articles you have written this year.

Thanks,

Patrick

[LuLu]

Ok but is "happy" capitalize as in: we would like to wish all of our affiliates a happy New Year!