A perfect parody
Editors and other journalists on Twitter have a new favorite to follow: FakeAPStylebook. It’s a dead-on spoof of The Associated Press Stylebook.
As The Onion does for news stories, FakeAPStylebook works so well because it mimics the tone and structure of its target. Here are a few examples of the style rulings from the fake stylebook:
- Always capitalize ‘Bible.’ You don’t want to get letters from those people.
- A surreal comma denotes a list of absurd items: fish mustache, one-legged spoon, glass violin.
- The correct spelling is ‘Mr. T.’ People who type out ‘Mister’ are fools to be pitied.
Enjoy more on the Twitter page of FakeAPStylebook.
My colleague at PBS, Mark Glaser, recently got a chance to interview the people behind the @fakeapstylebook account about how it got started and how they amassed so many followers in such a short amount of time:
Simon Owens
November 5, 2009 at 5:32 pm