The Editor’s Desk

Fake AP Stylebook, a parody of the AP Stylebook, is a hit on Twitter and has been written about in Wired and The New York Times. In this Q&A, conducted by e-mail, co-founder Ken Lowery talks about how Fake AP Stylebook got started, how it works and what’s ahead.

Q. What inspired you to start Fake AP Stylebook, and why did you choose Twitter as the place for it?

A. Just a joke, really. I’d shown my friend Mark Hale the real AP Stylebook feed, and he remarked that he wasn’t sure if he was sad or relieved it wasn’t a joke, and that was that. We’ve done this sort of thing before (with @zombiehorde, @forevercon, @thisreallyhurts and others) but none quite clicked like this one did.

As for why Twitter? It’s a good place to throw out quips and keep easy track of your followers and the general response. It’s a very low-effort messaging system, which likely helped FAPS spread like it did.

Q. Newspapers and magazines typically have stylebook committees to hash out style guidelines. How does that process work at Fake AP Stylebook?

A. There are only a few rules. 1) Nothing too political or nerdy. 2) Nothing overtly antagonistic; we’re not here to piss people off. And 3) Profanity is OK, but don’t go overboard.

Otherwise, we just try to stay absurd and light and funny, not unlike an especially fine-tuned episode of “30 Rock.” The contributors have a Google Group set up, and we exchange submission ideas, share questions people ask us that we think have good potential and other general reactions. It’s a bit like a writer’s workshop, with me and Mark as the benevolent dictators.

Q. In the spirit of social media, do you accept submissions?

A. We don’t. Before, this was because there were already a lot of us and we trusted the “tone” that we’d created, but now it’s a legal issue. If we accept submissions and make money off this later, we open ourselves up to lawsuits, whether they be just or not. S.O.P. for most working writers.

Q. Have you had any response from the real AP Stylebook?

None, though in the past day or so I’ve noticed they’ve gotten a little livelier and a little more interactive. Good for them.

Q. What’s ahead for Fake AP Stylebook?

A. A book. We’ve got an agent and many interested publishers, so we’re neck-deep in that right now. We’ve got 19 (!) experienced writers and designers on staff, so generating material has not been a problem so far.

After this, maybe something else. We want to build up an umbrella brand for future publications, because who knows? These contributors are some of the funniest and most talented people I know. They’re not going to be satisfied with just one book.

William Safire, former Nixon speechwriter and New York Times columnist, has died. He was 79.

Safire was famous for many achievements, winning a Pulitzer Prize for commentary for columns critical of the Carter administration. He wrote numerous books, including several about writing.

Editors and writers remember him as the author of the On Language column in the NYT for 30 years. Some of that work is among in this collection on the Times site, and a topics page there is devoted to him.

Safire also contributed these phrases to our political language:

• Calling critics of the Vietnam War “nattering nabobs of negativism.”

• Calling Hillary Clinton “a congenital liar.”

That and other details are included in the well-written Safire obit on the NYT site. It ends on a grammatical note — a suitable send-off for a man who loved language.

A front-page story in The New York Times on Sunday included this sentence:

Somehow, none of the Marines were hit in the secondary ambush.

I got stuck on “none.” I expected “was” to follow, as in “not one Marine was hit.”

Whether “none” is followed with a singular or plural verb is a matter of debate. Some people in high places think that it’s always singular, but is that so?

Here’s what the AP Stylebook advises:

It usually means no single one. When used in this sense, it always takes singular verbs and nouns: None of the seats was in its right place. Use a plural verb only if the sense is no two or no amount: None of the consultants agree on the same approach.

In other words, it depends. One solution to this problem is to dodge the issue and rewrite the sentence:

Somehow, no Marines were hit in the secondary ambush.

Can we all agree on that?

My favorite scene in “The Jerk” is when Steve Martin exclaims, “The new phonebook’s here! The new phonebook’s here!”

That’s how I feel when a new edition of the AP Stylebook is released. That time is now.

I prefer the stylebook in print, but if you like your style on screen, subscribe to the online edition. You can also follow the stylebook on Twitter.

North Carolina’s lawmakers are spending part of this legislative session on wordy matters, as documented in the Under the Dome blog.

• First, the Dome tells us in a series of posts about how legislators use titles of bills to make them more politically palatable. That’s why we have the North Carolina Racial Justice Act and the School Violence Prevention Act, among others.

• Second, we have news of a bill that would ensure that legislation is gender-neutral — the generic “he” would be “he or she.” The issue came up earlier this year when the state’s governor, Beverly Perdue, was described as “he” in an education bill.

Perhaps it’s time that the General Assembly write a stylebook to handle these matters. That’s what newspapers, magazines and book publishers do. The legislators are welcome to start with this one.

UPDATE: The posts on the Dome blog have been compiled and rewritten into a front-page story in The News & Observer.

Today is National Grammar Day. My feelings about this occasion are the same as they were National Buy A Newspaper Day — I offer support, but with reservations.

My reservations are similar to those expressed by a friend and former colleague, Pam Nelson of Triangle Grammar Guide. Here’s an excerpt from her recent post about National Grammar Day:

I would like writers to use lay and lie correctly and to get out a dictionary to be sure of the homonyms they use, but I refuse to get my unmentionables in a bunch over some deviations from the standard, especially in everyday speech.

So yes, let’s recognize how good grammar fosters communication. But let’s not become the pests who have given grammar a bad name. It’s easy to go overboard, after all.

So much for the reservations. Let’s get to the grammar. Here are three books that discuss the topic. Each is accessible, informative and entertaining:

• “Booher’s Rules of Business Grammar,” by Dianna Booher

• “When Words Collide,” by Lauren Kessler

• “Lapsing Into A Comma,” by Bill Walsh

If you prefer your grammar lessons online, take a look at this collection of links.

A recent Q&A on cover letters stayed near the top of the “most popular” list at the New York Times site for nearly a week. It’s certainly a timely article, with many people (including journalists) on the job market. And yes, those letters still matter in the age of the e-mailed résumé.

The last question in the Q&A is an important one. It’s about common mistakes in cover letters. Here’s part of the answer:

A cover letter with typos, misspellings and poor sentence structure may take you out of the running for a job. If you cannot afford to pay someone to review your cover letter and résumé, enlist a friend or a family member with good language skills to do it instead.

It’s true. Those things can take you out of the running for a job. I’ve seen that happen in newsrooms and in academia. If you are on the job market or want to go to graduate school, make sure those letters are clear and clean.

Some people make decisions about grammar based on how a sentence sounds. If you are one of those people, this new feature at The Wichita Eagle is for you.

Each Monday, Grammar Monkeys will offer grammar tips in a podcast. The first post is about “lay” versus “lie.” Give it a listen.

The wise FEV offers solid advice about those pesky adjectives in this well-written post on Headsup: The Blog.

That insightful post reminded little old me of this adjective-themed episode of the nostalgia-inducing “Schoolhouse Rock.” Here’s my favorite part:

We hiked along without care.

Then we ran into a bear.

He was a hairy bear.

He was a scary bear.

We beat a hasty retreat from his lair.

And described him with adjectives.

Enjoy the 1970s-era video. If you are afraid the catchy song will get stuck in your already clogged brain, just read the clever words.

Fellow editing blogger Craig Lancaster at Watch Yer Language recently took note of a column by James Kilpatrick. The topic of the column was “that” versus “which.” The didactic Kilpatrick expresses his disdain for “which.”

I liked Craig’s measured response to Kilpatrick, in which he diagnosed a blend of tact and grammar in working with writers who struggle with this problem. I also like this advice on “which” from After Deadline, a blog by a deputy news editor at The New York Times.

Kilpatrick is wrong to throw out “which” altogether. After all, it’s not that complicated to determine which is correct.