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.

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.

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.

I’ve written before about an exercise in my editing course in which students settle a few style points. It’s that time of the semester again, and here’s what the classes contemplated and decided this week:

First-year student vs. freshman: The majority went with “freshman” as the preferred term, though a few made a case for the gender-neutral “first-year.” (The latter is what the university likes.)

Global warming vs. climate change: This got an “it depends” response, depending on what the story was about. (It’s one that we dealt with earlier this year as part of the News21 project.)

Mike vs. mic: For the third consecutive semester, students unanimously went with “mic” as a short form for microphone. The reasons given were similar to those in prior semesters — it sounds more contemporary, and it’s what used in the recording industry.

This exercise lives in the gray areas of editing, and to college students “mike vs. mic” is a black-and-white issue. Because it is apparently not contentious enough, I am considering dropping it after this semester.

Are the fans of “mike” ready to talk me into keeping it?

The U.S. Open is in full swing, and one of the highlights has been the unexpected rise of Melanie Oudin, a 17-year-old who knocked off several higher-ranked players. It’s the kind of story that the media love.

That led a colleague to ask on Facebook:

Can a tennis fan explain to me why I keep hearing her referred to as “American-born Melanie Oudin”? What is the importance or significance of where she was born, e.g., they don’t say “Russian-born Maria Sharapova.”

I replied that tennis is an international game that brings out nationalistic feelings in some fans. Many of us who follow tennis cheer for their countrymen (although my favorite player of all time is Swedish-born Bjorn Borg). Curiously, that attitude manifests itself more in devotion to individual players than in the team-based Davis Cup, at least in the United States.

Tune in to the U.S. Open, and you will hear John McEnroe and brother Patrick bemoan the state of men’s tennis in America. Follow Wimbledon, and you will learn how the British yearn for one of their own to win that title. Fans of players wave the flag of the home country at matches.

As for “-born,” that could be a reference to the fact that some players were born in one country but now live in another. Sharapova, for example, has left her native Russia for the warmer climate of Bradenton, Fla.

It is indeed puzzling to see “born” attached to Oudin’s name. She was born in Georgia (the U.S. state, not the country) and still lives there. A simple “American” before her name will suffice.

And here’s a bit of advice to sports journalists and headline writers: “America’s sweetheart” and “girl next door” have already become shopworn ways to describe Oudin. Avoid these clichés.

From time to time on this blog, I’ve documented amusing third-person references in news stories.

Joe Biden, the vice president, has talked about being “the best Biden” he can be. Tom Tancredo, a presidential candidate in 2008, noted that his rivals were trying to “out-Tancredo” him. And Flavor Flav, the rapper turned reality TV star, worked in four such statements in one Entertainment Weekly profile.

Here comes the topper. Donald Trump, in this news item about the Miss Universe pageant, says this:

I think this is the most beautiful group of women I’ve ever seen. In the old days, you got what you got. Now, Trump picks them. It makes a big difference.

Indeed it does, Mr. Trump. Indeed it does.

A colleague at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication passed along the following e-mail earlier this week:

I have a goofy question, but I’ve been searching for a while and come up with no answer so I decided to consult the “journalism style guys” — that’s you. When writing the name of a blog, do you italicize it, like the name of a book, newspaper or magazine? Or is there another way of punctuating it?

Once again, we are in “it depends” territory. There is no right or wrong here, but it’s a good idea to consider how to handle names of blogs if they appear frequently in your writing.

The AP stylebook, which is what many of us “style guys” use, doesn’t offer specific guidance on what to do with blog titles.

Under “composition titles,” AP likes quotation marks around the names of movies, TV shows, songs, poems and most books. Exceptions include the Bible and reference works such as Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft.

AP doesn’t like quotation marks around names of newspapers and magazines, and it has never been fond of italics for anything. “AP does not italicize words in news stories,” the latest edition of the stylebook says.

To my eye, a blog shares more similarities with magazines and newspapers than it does with books or movies. I’d simply capitalize the name, like so: “Talking Points Memo was selected as the best blog of 2009.”

You are welcome, of course, to go with a style that may be more appropriate to your audience. For example, some music magazines put album titles in italics and names of individual songs in quote marks, a device that signals to the reader which is which.

As John McIntyre of You Don’t Say recently pointed out, AP is not the only style in town. The important thing to do is to select a style and then use it, along with common sense.

Joe Grimm, a longtime recruiter at the Detroit Free Press who now teaches at Michigan State, recently listed common errors of AP style that he sees on journalists’ resumes.

Capitalization and abbreviations were among the violations. As Grimm pointed out, these are errors by people who say they know AP style.

Certainly, as noted here and here, mistakes on a resume or a cover letter can weaken your chances for landing a job, especially in journalism. But are the intricacies of AP style needed? To use a picayune example, are we going to disqualify a job candidate for using “persuade” when AP calls for “convince”?

Because I first heard about Grimm’s list on Twitter, I decided to ask fellow journalists there about whether AP style is essential for a resume sent to a newsroom. Here are some replies, written in Twitter style:

Gerri Berendzen, copy editor at the Quincy Herald-Whig: “Should journalist’s resume follow AP style? While it hasn’t been a deal breaker for me, I notice it. You should know audience.”

Cathy Frail, news editor at the News & Record in Greensboro, N.C.: “Correct grammar is more important than style. Once got resume from designer with no caps at all. too much focus on appearance.”

Ginger Carter Miller, professor of mass communication at Georgia College & State University: “I say yes! And I teach it that way for all mscm students.”

Jim Santori, publisher of the Mankato Free Press: “Recent dilemma: Friend sought PR job w/JSchool wondered — use academia or AP style in resume, cover letter?”

My view is that it can’t hurt to use AP style when applying for a job at a place where you will have to use it. But you shouldn’t have to worry about job recruiters marking up resumes and cover letters with red pens. Editing tests (usually given as part of an interview) will see what you really know.

The question about academic jobs is more difficult. Faculty members in journalism schools use a mix of styles, including Chicago and Bluebook, in their academic writing.

In an academic situation, any style is fine in a job application as long there’s a sense of consistency to the materials. Just don’t misspell the name of the school or the dean.

I’ve spent part of my summer working with 12 talented students at UNC-Chapel Hill on Powering A Nation, a Web site that looks at the intersection of energy and demographics. The site, which debuted Friday, is part of the News21 project.

As one of several faculty coaches, I advised the project’s editing team on issues of work flow, story editing, alternative story forms, word choice and headlines. It was a pleasure to work with this group in our newsroom.

It’s important to note that members of the editing team also served as reporters. As reporters wrapped up their stories, they were sometimes drafted for other duties, including help with editing. As you can see on the site’s “making of” blog, everyone did a bit of everything.

The idea behind News21 is to serve as an incubator for multimedia journalism, where students can chart a course for the future of news. My time with the students this summer reinforced my belief that editing will play a significant role in that future.

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?