What is the AP Stylebook?

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It struck me recently that I often mention the Associated Press Stylebook in my blog entries and not everyone may know to what I’m referring.

The stylebook is a guide for writers and editors — really anyone that writes about current events. It is a compendium of rules and guidelines on spelling and usage and has a smattering of pertinent facts. In the foreword to the 2002 edition, president Louis Boccardi described it as “a reference book for terms and topics commonly encountered in news writing.”

For example, do you use even-steven or even-stephen? Protester or protestor? The stylebook says the former in both cases. Another entry reads:

Exxon Mobil Corp. Energy corporation formed from the 1999 merger of Exxon and Mobil, both formerly part of Standard Oil. ExxonMobil is acceptable as a subsequent reference to the official corporate name.

Headquarters is in Irving, Texas, with exploration, production and chemical operations based in Houston.

The book also contains sports guidelines, business guidelines, a guide to punctuation and a briefing on media law.

From AAA to ZIP code, the stylebook helps set a consistent tone in The Eagle and at Kansas.com for the words, phrases and descriptions we use.

— Michael

2 Comments

  1. broadcast_newsie
    Posted October 17, 2007 at 5:06 am | Permalink

    I will vouch for this…my major was journalism, and the Stylebook was *the* source for us to use in our news writing. It’s still one of my go-to items when I’m looking for a little direction in how to phrase things.

  2. Bill
    Posted October 17, 2007 at 5:40 pm | Permalink

    Yes, we over here in the Northwest use this stylebook a lot. For example, Frog legs is two words. Unless you are referring to frogleg soup then it’s one word.

    Sure miss those sunsets

    Your friend, Bill