All right, friends, in this month’s column we are going to discuss something that doesn’t get a lot of press, even though (ironically perhaps) it is always in print: AP style.
Trisha Walker
The AP in this instance stands for Associated Press, and its stylebook is the industry standard for newspapers (“and all writers in all professions,” according to the cover of my 55th edition) around the world. At Columbia Gorge News, we use the AP Stylebook to bring consistency to our newspaper as a whole — in other words, so we’re all on the same page.
(It’s like these bad puns just write themselves.)
Without AP style to guide us, the stories in this newspaper would end up being a hodgepodge of abbreviations, capitalization, and punctuation. It’s why we abbreviate “1234 SE Goose Blvd.” but not “SE Goose Boulevard” (and also why “Avenue” and “Street” are abbreviated but “Drive” and “Road” are not). It’s why we write “bachelor’s degree” (lowercase) and “Bachelor of Arts” (uppercase). It’s why we write “Executive Director This Person,” as well as “This Person, executive director.”
But there’s also our internal Columbia Gorge News style — like how we use long dashes (—) instead of short (-), or why we continue to abbreviate state names a certain way even though AP editors recently decided we should spell them all out except in datelines.
(Datelines, incidentally, are the place name, in capital letters: HOOD RIVER. Why is it called a dateline, then? I don’t know, old timey reasons probably.)
As Editor Mark Gibson likes to say, AP style is a guide for what is ultimately Columbia Gorge News style. (Although please do not ask me where we stand on the oxford comma. None of us can agree. I’ve decided that whole situation is something you just feel with your heart in the moment.)
I am a reporter, but I’m also an editor, so I have our CGN style points memorized. (We had to come to some compromises when we combined the Hood River News, White Salmon Enterprise and The Dalles Chronicle, because while some were to standard AP style, many were simply things we’d each been doing our own ways for more old timey reasons.) But each deadline I spend time inevitably looking through my AP Stylebook to see where it weighs in on whatever it is I’m questioning. And sometimes it’s just fun to flip to a random page and read whatever is there, but that’s a column for another time.
AP style can be fussy (“adviser” instead of “advisor,” anyone?), but the consistency it provides is invaluable. I don’t know about you, but I think it’s distracting to find irregularities when I’m reading. Using one basic style is the equivalent of driving on a nicely paved road instead of one riddled with potholes — you only notice when something’s wrong.
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