Style Guide Practice Report - 2
Olivia Burd
Style and Rhetoric
Professor Sanchez
March 2, 2025
Style Guide Practice Report: Scenario 2
A record high number of 40-year-olds are not married
The Pew Research Center has recently shared that the number of unmarried 40-year-olds has reached a new record high of 25% (Fry, 2023). For now, this trend is projected to increase. Just in the 2000s alone, the percentage has already increased several times. For reference, between the years 2010 and 2021, there was a 5% increase in unmarried 40-year-olds. To compare; back in 1980, just 6% of 40-year-olds were never married. It’s important to recognise that the reasoning behind this rapid increase is complex and multifaceted.
Millennials and Generation Z are inadvertently changing the way that we view marriage as a society. The traditional timeline of events usually consists of getting married then living together, but even this is changing. The Pew study also recognised that 22% of unmarried adults between the ages of 40-44 are living with their partner (Fry, 2023). This is equivalent to every 3 in 5 unmarried couples living with their partners. Proving that you can be with your forever, forever without marriage has opened the doors for marriage to not feel so necessary. In fact, 72% of people just simply do not feel like getting married. No rhyme or reason, it is just not for them.
The cost of weddings is also a common deterrent. Currently, in 2025 the average cost of a wedding in the United Kingdom is £23,250 ($29,314). Given the state of the current economy, this price point is not obtainable for most individuals, and most weddings go significantly over budget. Millennial and Gen Z couples would rather spend that amount of money on a home to build a future in. Every 1 in 2 couples said that finances were part of their decision to move in together.
The increase in 40-year-olds never being married is not to say that nobody gets married anymore, it just has become less necessary. There are still plenty of individuals out there that are eager to get married. In fact, 23% of individuals still believe that marriage is necessary to live a fulfilling life (Schaeffer, 2023). Also, 1 in 4 adults who were not married by 40 were married by 60 instead.
Scenario Two: Executive Summary
For scenario two I chose to follow The BBC News style guide to discuss the Pew finding that there is a record high number of 40-year-olds who aren’t married. For this scenario, my target audience is those who are under forty and unmarried, who might be worried that they’ll also still be unmarried at 40. Those who are weighing the pros and cons of marriage would also make an interesting target audience for this writing. Since the writing has a formal tone and is simply here to state facts, it allows this intended audience to learn more about why there’s an increase in unmarried people. It will also educate the reader on why some people are choosing not to get married or why they are, so that the reader can make an educated decision.
The things on the style guide that I thought were crucial to include in this are no contractions, no apostrophes with dates, and that in the UK, instead of using “-ize” they use “-ise” and lastly currency conversions. I mostly focussed on these elements because they’re the ones that make this writing more ‘British’ and therefore more like the BBC rather than a regular American news platform. The no contractions element is important too because that usually makes writing feel more professional which is exactly what the BBC does. The conversion of currencies is also discussed in the style guide. Since the BBC is UK based, that’s the amount outside the parentheses, but the U.S conversion is important for American readers.
The lack of contractions can be represented in the sentence “72% of people just simply do not feel like getting married”. This is out of the norm for how I would write this sentence, but it does feel more professional. The sentence “Just in the 2000s alone, the percentage has already increased several times.” represents the style guide suggestion that there should be no apostrophes in dates. Again, this is something that must be unique to the UK and it makes this writing look more like the BBC. In the sentence “It’s important to recognise that the reasoning behind this rapid increase is complex and multifaceted.”, recognized is spelled the way that the style guide suggests and it’s the way that those living in the UK spell so again, this fits the stylistic choices of the BBC. Lastly is the currency conversions as explained in the style guide. I used them here, “Currently, in 2025 the average cost of a wedding in the United Kingdom is £23,250 ($29,314).”Again, this just shows that this is written for the UK readers of the BBC but also something that Americans could understand now too.
References:
https://thrivingcenterofpsych.com/blog/millennials-gen-z-marriage-expectations-statistics/
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