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One sure sign of spring is the sighting of new entries for The Associated Press Stylebook.
For the past few years, changes in the AP Stylebook have been announced to coincide with the annual conference of the American Copy Editors Society. (Full disclosure: This columnist is a member of the ACES board.)
AP caused some consternationâor reliefâwhen it announced that âinternetâ and âwebâ would be lowercased as of June 1. âThey have become generic terms,â says Tom Kent, the AP standards editor for the AP and one of the Stylebookâs editors.
AP Stylebook drops a bombshell at #ACES2016 pic.twitter.com/Db5KGY8Z91
â Mededitor (@Mededitor) April 2, 2016
You’re consumed with power, @APStylebook. Entire galaxies will burn for this. https://t.co/5vK3Qstl8m
â Matt Moore (@Guerrillascribe) April 2, 2016
LOVE the internet, web @APStylebook change. Should enact before June 1. Rip off the Band-Aid. (Sorry, “adhesive bandage.”) #ACES2016
â Amber Krosel (@AmberKrosel) April 2, 2016
Other changes did not elicit the same emotion, and the outcry over âinternetâ and âwebâ did not approach the wailing and gnashing of teeth that accompanied APâs acceptance of âoverâ for non-physical distances.
AP now recommends that writers avoid using the word âprostituteâ when a child is involved, as in âchild prostitute,â âteenage prostitute,â and so forth, because it implies that the child âis voluntarily trading sex for money,â Kent says, and a child, by definition, cannot do so. Also, the word âmistressâ has no male equivalent, Kent notes, and means different things in different parts of the world, so the AP now recommends avoiding the term and using âcompanion,â âfriend,â or âloverâ if applicable. âWhenever possible,â the new entry says, âphrasing that acknowledges both people in the relationship is preferred: âThe two were romantically (or sexually) involved.â â
Two other changes strike close to our hearts. One new entry, âaccident, crash,â echoes something we wrote some time ago:
accident, crash: Generally acceptable for automobile and other collisions and wrecks. However, when negligence is claimed or proven, avoid accident, which can be read by some as a term exonerating the person responsible. In such cases, use crash, collision or other terms.
Some crashes are merely accidents, but in others, as we wrote, â âaccidentâ implies happenstance and some lack of responsibility.â
Our personal favorite is an acknowledgment, actually made in a December AP update, that terms like âtwo-alarm fireâ are, as Kent says, âmeaninglessâ without a sense of context. We said that years ago.
Avoid referring to a fire in terms of the number of âalarms,â which may mean little to a distant reader. Depending on the city or town, a two-alarm fire could involve widely varying numbers of firefighters. Instead, specify the number of firefighters or quantity of equipment.
Other changes include making âdash camâ one word (though âbody camâ remains as two), not using âspreeâ in a negative context like âkilling spree,â and making sure that people understand that âexponential growthâ means progressively larger (5 percent this year, 10 percent next, etc.) and not just fast growth.
Next week, weâll discuss what AP did not address, but others did: the singular âthey.â
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