"Called, no answer." OR "Called. No Answer."

Question

What is the proper grammar to say we called someone but received no answer: "Called, no answer." OR "Called. No Answer."?

Answer 1

Called, no answer is not a full sentence by the traditional definition, nor is Called. No answer. But there is no requirement that journal or log entries be full sentences; you are not writing a persuasive essay that demonstrates that a contact was called but there was no answer, merely recording the fact of it.

Rather, one would expect telegraphic English, in the sense of

omitting inessential words; concise

[ODO]. This meaning came about as communication by telegraph was charged by length, so it was in the sender's interest to keep wording to the absolute minimum needed to convey information. It is why this McSweeney's article fails; a Victorian would understand perfectly well how to fit a flirtatious invitation into 140 characters or less.

Telegraphic English has several variants, of which the most widely known is probably headline English (or headlinese), but it is also seen on street signs, labels, postcards, SMS messages, and anywhere else where space or time are limited.

For a log, I would expect diary English. A human needs to be able to scan a log, which may be many thousands of lines, very quickly, so great liberties are taken in order to simplify and shorten the language, and to remove any superfluous words. This is not unlike an archetypical diary or personal journal, where an individual records mostly perfunctory details mostly for private use, allowing a high degree of compression. Consider

Woke at 5. Need eggs. Saw Marg. at lib. Hurts. Decided MIA for Tday.

instead of

I awoke at 5 o'clock. I discovered that I need to buy eggs. Later, I saw Margaret at the library. It hurts me to see her again. In any event, I have decided I will travel to Miami for the Thanksgiving holiday this year.

This phenomenon of deleting the subject in diaries is common enough that at least one paper I found on the Internet refers to it as the diary drop. Other characteristics of telegraphic English may also be found, such as omitting auxiliary verbs and articles, simplifying tenses and punctuation, and of course rampant use of abbreviations.

So in truth, either Called, no answer or Called. No answer. is fine in the absence of any other authority instructing you to use a different style. In fact, I would not be surprised if they were supplanted altogether by CNA down the line.

Answer 2

Complete sentence:

We called. There was no answer.

Sentence fragments (note that "answer" is not capitalized):

Called. No answer.

"Called, no answer" is technically a comma splice, but you can get by with those if the clauses are short enough (Grammar Tips).

Answer 3

actually there's some semantic ambiguity about what actually is meant here.

you could be expressing a single idea, or two different ideas.

one idea: '(we) called, (there was) no answer.' or '(we) called. (there was) no answer.'

two ideas: '(the game/situation/outcome is) called. (give) no answer.' in this case, the first idea is the adjectivally-flavored past participle form of the verb 'call', and the second idea is an imperative omitting the verb.

whereas if there is only one idea parsed then the 'called' is in the simple past. were it an irregular verb with different simple past and past participle forms this ambiguity would not exist.

like the above responder said, if you're expressing one idea you could get away with using a comma, though it strikes me two sentences would be more 'proper'. if you're expressing two ideas, you pretty much have to use the 'called. no answer.' form.