Editing notes: Style by the book

When journalists use the word style, they’re not talking about designer clothes. For them, style means a set of rules about the language, about names, about anything that might be done two or more ways. The style book picks one and sticks with it.

Style is how news organizations ensure consistency in their presentation. For the writer and editor, style mainly concerns how language is used, including everything from how to abbreviate California to whether Harry S. Truman’s middle initial takes a period. (It does, according to the Associated Press. Although the initial doesn’t stand for anything, Truman said in the 1960s, “It makes no difference.” Since then, AP has gone with the standard practice of using the period.)

The rise of the AP

The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual has become the industry standard mostly by default. Years ago, the AP and United Press International competed as equals in providing services to news organizations. In the 1980s, UPI went into sharp decline and no longer exists. The Associated Press says in its stylebook that it now provides “state, national and international news, photos, graphics and broadcast services to newspapers, radio and television stations around the world.”

Part of the AP’s success is due to its status as a cooperative of its members. It remains sensitive to the needs of its customers because they are its owners. The flip side is that much of what the AP distributes comes from its members.

If you think about the wide reach of the Associated Press, you will realize that consistency in its use of language isn’t just a journalistic nicety; it’s an economic necessity. If its members all used their own style, the AP would spend countless employee hours correcting style errors. For news outlets, adapting to AP style eases the workload on editors who handle primarily AP wire copy.

Not that other wire services don’t exist. Reuters is a service that specializes in international news. The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal offer wire services, as do news conglomerates such as Gannett, Knight-Ridder, Newhouse and Tribune Media. Each of these wire services may have its own style following its parent organization. Wire editors soon become adept at picking up the differences between, say, the New York Times and the Associated Press.

Local style

Large news organizations often have their own style books. These may agree for the most part with AP style, but they also will include “local” style: exceptions and additions to AP style. These are standard ways of referring to local government, organizations or locations.

Smaller news organizations that use the AP Stylebook also develop local style sheets. These may be a printed collection of style points or simply a computer file where the copy desk chief posts style points.

Common ground

The people who write style books today seek to conform to the most commonly used rules of grammar, punctuation and usage. This has not always been so. In the 1930s, Col. Robert McCormick, the eccentric owner of the Chicago Tribune, attempted to recast the English language into simplified spellings. The Tribune’s style was his main engine of change. For many years, the Tribune style book dictated spellings such as frater for freighter and thru for through.

When I was hired at the Tribune in 1983, the paper’s style book noted that the last of these truncated spellings had been eliminated. “Cigaret,” replaced by the preferred “cigarette,” was one of these last words to go.

In his forward to the 2000 edition of the AP Stylebook, AP President Louis D. Boccardi wrote that the goal of the Stylebook has always been to “make clear and simple rules, permit few exceptions to the rules, and rely heavily on the chosen dictionary as the arbiter of conflicts.”

Boccardi acknowledged that journalists aren’t unanimous in their approach to style.

“Some don’t think it is really important,” he wrote. “Some agree that basically there should be uniformity for reading ease if nothing else. Still others are prepared to duel over a wayward lowercase.”

Copy editors run into all three.

The first type, those who think style is not important, have wasted the editor’s time by expecting them to fix style errors. This type of sloppiness is unprofessional, and it damages the confidence editors have in a writer.

The third type, those who think stylebooks must answer to some higher order for every period and abbreviation, waste time in unproductive argument. In the end, somebody has to decide a common way to do things, and not everyone will agree.

I’m in the second category. If style is based as much as possible on accepted practices, then the professional thing to do is learn proper style and use it.

Style and the World Wide Web

Attention to style is one element of professionalism in your approach to journalism. Inconsistent style, along with grammar and punctuation errors, mark the blogger or Web author as an amateur. As the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe said, “God is in the details,” meaning that whatever we do, we should do thoroughly.

The key entries

Almost every news story contains names, titles, addresses and dates. After a few nights on a desk, editors come to apply style in these areas by force of habit. Here, in alphabetical order, are the AP Stylebook entries you’ll use the most and are most worthy of study:

1. Abbreviations and acronyms
2. Addresses
3. Capitalization
4. Courtesy title
5. Datelines
6. Dimensions
7. Directions and regions
8. Essential clauses, non-essential clauses
9. Essential phrases, non-essential phrases
10. Numerals
11. Organizations and institutions
12. Plurals
13. Possessives
14. Quotation marks
15. State names
16. That
17. Time element
18. Times
19. Titles
20. United States
21. Verbs