For the virtual Fall JEA/NSPA National High School Journalism Convention, I recorded an asynchronous workshop about AP Style and some of the additional style choices we make in school media. Please register — the workshop runs now through Jan. 15 — to see the entire presentation and to hear my little dog share his opinions (bark! bark!).
AP Style
- Adviser. Not advisor. (This is the entire entry in the AP Stylebook — I love it.)
- COVID-19 (Coronavirus is the pandemic. COVID-19 is the disease.)
- State names (“I know there's California, Oklahoma / And all of the places I ain't ever been to…” so spell out the entire state name.)
- Time (AP Style focuses on clarity through brevity, so please stop using the :00 to indicate o’clock. Besides it looks like a weird smiley. Use 1 p.m. and 11 a.m.)
- Day (Use Monday, Tuesday, etc., for days of the week within seven days before or after the current date. “I plan to vote on Tuesday,” clearly implies next Tuesday. “She voted on Tuesday,” clearly shows last Tuesday. No need to overexplain.)
- Comma (Resist the urge to use a serial or Oxford comma.)
- Figures (Spell out one through nine. Use figures for 10 and above. There are many exceptions.)
- Age (Always use figures. Use hyphens for ages expressed as adjectives before a noun or as substitutes for a noun. A 5-year-old boy. The boy is 5 years old.)
- Hyphens (Use hyphens as joiners: small-business owner. Use hyphens for ranges, such as Jan. 1-4. There should be no spaces surrounding a hyphen.)
- Dashes (In AP Style, all dashes are em dashes. Put a space on both sides of a dash in all uses. Don’t hate me, I know this one hurts your eyes, friends. Do it anyway.)
- Course titles (My classes are English, Algebra II, history and journalism. Only capitalize classes that are proper nouns or are the named title of the course.)
- Sports (Do not capitalize varsity, the names of sports or positions. The reason JV is capitalized is because it is an abbreviation. The varsity and JV field hockey teams scrimmaged each other. We play tennis with the point guard from the basketball team.)
- Composed works (Put quotation marks around the names of titles of books, movies, plays, poems, albums, songs, operas, radio and television programs, lectures, speeches, and works of art except the Bible, the Quran and other holy books. No italics, no underline.)
- Apostrophes to form plurals (Use apostrophes to form the plural of single letters but not figures or multiple letters. A’s and B’s as well as IQs , DVDs.)
Plus+
Here are some scholastic media style points are known to be best practices.
- Names (Give some information about each person attached to the first use of their name. Principal Jon Wimbish is the girls’ varsity soccer coach. Forward tackle #3 Erin Gable ’22 scored the winning goal. Sophomore student council representative Natalie Ro ’24 turned 16 on Tuesday.)
- Grade vs. age (Do not list grade after name. Nathan Wang, 8, means Nathan is 8 years old, not in eighth grade. Use Nathan Wang ’26 to show graduation year.)
- Grade (AP Style says, use figures for grades 10 and above: 10th grade. Spell out for first through ninth grades. Some school-specific style guides use figures for all grades for consistency.)
- Quote. (Use typographer’s quotes: open-quote marks (“) and close-quote marks (”). Use “Quote,” name said. construction in separate paragraphs. “When the speaker gives a complex answer with lots of information,” name said. “It’s best to ‘bury the attribution’ between the two thoughts.” )
- Said. (The only word for said is said. Do not use commented, told us, implied, etc. Never use “when asked” as the quote should stand alone. The only exception is if your quote came from an announcement or press release. “We love yearbook,” the principal announced at the pep rally.)
I hope you find this useful. What additional style decisions have you made as a staff? What style mistakes do you see most often when you’re editing?