I'm writing a chapter where the character walks through a town, and a couple of the streets are named. Is it better to spell it out entirely, or can I abbreviate them like they are on street signs? IE, "Patterson Street" vs "Patterson St."
I think it depends on how you're doing the writing overall. If you're being pretty informal then feel free to abbreviate, but if it's fairly formal, like novels generally are (or were decades ago anyway) then I'd stick with the full words.
Would you consider this formal or informal writing? "Now, standing on Tanner Street at half past midnight, alone but for the frigid caress of the wind, she couldn’t help but shudder at the overwhelming wrongness[...]"
If you are describing where the character is walking, as in "Our intrepid hero parked at the corner of Main Street and Electric Avenue and strolled casually to the west, looking for ..." you would write out "Street" or "Road." If you are quoting the street sign (as in "Marcus looked around for some indication of where he was. Eventually the beam of his flashlight played over a street sign: 'FLATBUSH AVE,' it read.") you would cite it exactly as it would be written on the sign. But pay attention to how street signs are written. They are (in my experience) always in all caps. In a book, that would typically be set in small caps.
I would agree with SapereAude. Unless you are quoting the physical sign I would go with writing out the entire word. However, if the word is 'boulevard' or something equally as long-winded as that, I might think about changing it up to be more concise (like 'street'). No one likes reading a three-syllable word fifteen times in a chapter.
What complicates this is the American vs. the British usage of abbreviations. In the former, you'd have "Dr.," "Mr.," and "Mrs." whereas in the latter you'd find "Dr," "Mr," and "Mrs". The logic (and I use the word advisedly) is that when you're ripping letters out of the middle of the word, you don't need to tack on the period at the end of the evisceration. (If usage has changed, I stand corrected, but this is what I was taught when I learned to write with quill pens.) But if you're rendering actual speech, my preference is to spell out the goddamn word unless that would be too cumbersome. "In 1945, we moved from Second Street to Arlington Avenue, only thirteen blocks away." Because "nineteen-forty-five" looks weird on the page, doesn't it? I live on Seventh Avenue in Sacramento ... or is it 7th Avenue, or 7th Ave.? It depends on how pompous I wish to sound, and how much of a hurry I'm in when I'm writing return addresses.
In journalistic writing, we abbreviate when using a specific numeric address, and spell out when using the street in a more general sense: 22 Baker St. vs. Baker Street; 742 Sycamore Ave. vs. Sycamore Avenue, etc.
Noted. The publishers will have their own preferences, so it's worth it to consult the style book they use. But in dialog, my own preference is to spell out things, unless it's really cumbersome. Which was the point of my post.
Absolutely! And I should have clarified - in journalistic writing in Canada (according the Canadian Press Stylebook) - but this is not a hard-and-fast rule for all forms of writing.
I don’t believe using St would make it less formal. I would use the full form, but look for other ways to make it less formal.
This is how I've always done it. I'll just add that "Road" is always spelled out whether an address number is used or not.