AP « We Write For You

One space, not two spaces, after a period. Period.

October 22, 2009 | Posted in: General Writing, Old School | Tags: AP, AP Stylebook, colons, copywriting, editing, editing tips, grammar, periods, spaces, spacing, We Write For You, wewriteforyou.com, writing, writing tips |

A sign showing an exclamation point. For many years, writers were taught to include two spaces after periods and certain other punctuation marks, such as colons. There was good reason for this at the time: Typewriters produced a typeface that made it aesthetically unpleasant to have only one space separating sentences.

However, those days are long gone. The fonts computers produce have made the two-space method unnecessary. Today, every major style manual (including the Chicago Manual of Style and the AP Stylebook) makes it clear that one space is proper.

Does it matter if you still use two? Actually, yes. Anytime we see two spaces in an article that was written in recent years, we immediately think “amateur hour.” And that’s the last thing you want your reader to think about you.

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Now, that’s an embarrassing typo: AP Stylebook edition

August 7, 2009 | Posted in: General Writing, Old School | Tags: AP, AP style, AP Stylebook, AP Stylebook 2009, business writing, editing, editing tips, FAQ, Frequently Asked Questions, grammar, proofreading, style guides, We Write For You, wewriteforyou.com, writing, writing tips |

If you’re ever uncertain about how to spell a word, it’s always worth the time to look it up. As we mentioned in this earlier post, it takes only seconds to look up a word on an online dictionary.

By the same token, if you write quite a bit, it’s definitely worth the $15 to get online access to the AP Stylebook, the best go-to guide for proper usage. It’s a phenomenal resource you can check out here.

However, a visit to the site’s Frequently Asked Questions page reminds you that anyone can make a mistake. The FAQ’s second item reads:

Is the 2008 Associated Press Stylebook available? No, it has sold out and is not going to be reprint. The ISBN number is 978-0-917360-52-7

The obvious goof here is that “reprint” should be “reprinted.” But if we’re going to be picky (and you just know we are), the answer also is missing a period at the end.

And that’s not simply a “style” consideration, ironic as that would be. All of the other answers in the FAQ (including another that ends in a series of numbers) end with a period.

Again, we strongly recommend a subscription to the AP Stylebook to anyone who writes professionally on a regular basis (rest assured, we don’t receive a commission or anything else from the Associated Press).

But we have given the AP a heads-up about the FAQ goof, and we’re curious to see how quickly it gets fixed.

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Grammar Girl (referencing AP Style) takes on “To tweet or to Twitter”

July 11, 2009 | Posted in: General Writing, Outside the Lines | Tags: AP, AP style, AP Stylebook, Grammar Girl, Mignon Fogarty, tweet, tweeting, Twitter, Twittering, We Write For You, writing, writing tips |

This is really little more than a link to a recent post by Grammar Girl, a/k/a Mignon Fogarty, who does some fun writing about all things grammar at her site.

As Ms. Fogarty notes, the Associated Press recently released its 2009 AP Stylebook, which many organizations use to determine their default “style” for word usage. It’s an invaluable reference that we at We Write For You use as our style guide as well.

In her post, she points out that the AP ultimately decided that you can say a Twitter user is Twittering or tweeting, whichever verb you prefer. Note that “tweet” and “tweeting” are not capitalized, while “Twittering” is. There’s some more interesting stuff here, so we highly recommend you check out the post here.

P.S. If you Twitter or tweet, be sure to follow us on Twitter. You can find us here, and you can check out Grammar Girl right here.

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