so stylish

In a blog comment by Matthew, which I rudely never answered, I was asked what style guide my office uses. The answer, Matthew, is Associated Press. The Chicago Manual of Style, from what I understand, is for suckers (note: I myself have never used that style guide).

Anyways, I was consulting my style guide quite a bit yesterday, in a futile attempt to prove to my editor that split infinitives, both the real ones that she identified and the fake ones that I identified, were in fact, okay. I like to really split infinitives. Split 'em up to merely screw up the meaning and to very much mess with people's heads. Also! I wanted to see if this thing was in the stylebook: that you should spell "just deserts" as that way instead of the way it sounds, "just desserts." That's not in the style guide, but I guess it's just something smart people know, and apparently my editor is quite smart. And I'm not saying that because I know she reads the blog.

The A.P. Stylebook, in case you have never had a chance to glance at it, is a wealth of information, including the notion that split infinites are sometimes not that bad. But even though no one cared to listen to that little piece of info, I thought I'd share a few more nuggets of style as defined by the Associated Press. I picked out one interesting style regulation for each letter of the alphabet. In picking these out, it occurred to me that these might be obvious rules, things that everyone knows and that I will expose my ignorance of basic English and its rules. But oh well. Here we go:

A: Apparently you spell the day my birthday falls on as April Fools' Day, not as April Fool's Day. Whoops. I liked thinking that it belonged to just one fool, not many.

B: Do you enjoy spending time your back yard? Well, then you are spending time in a place that doesn't exist! Because it is always, always, the backyard.

C: How many times have you said, "look at all the beautiful cacti!" Next time you say something like that, you should say, "look at all the beautiful cactuses!"

D: Dr Pepper has NO PERIOD after the Dr -- which makes me think that he's not a real doctor.

E: When people speak of a "more equal" distribution of wealth, what is meant is "more equitable." Keep that in mind when our socialist president takes office.

F: Instead of saying "floppy disk", you should say "diskette." Which makes me wonder if I have a really old version of the style guide, because who is still talking about floppy disks.

G: Look guys, "gung-ho" is a colloquialism, so only use it sparingly.

H: The term "hillbilly" is usually a derogatory term for an Appalachian backwoods or mountain person, and "mountaineer" is a suggested alternative. Which means that the Appalachian State Mountaineers, of which my brother William is one, are extremely politically correct.

I: So I was reading through the I section, not finding much to spark my interest. Then I was reading the entry for "infra-", which doesn't need a hyphen, generally, as evidenced by the examples of infrared and infrastructure, and I was all like, didn't I just read this? AND I DID. The style guide put the "infra-" entry into the I section TWICE, once in the right place and once in the completely WRONG place. Don't think I won't use this as evidence of the fallibility of the Associated Press.

J: Jaws of Life is a trademarked term for the tool that pries people out of their cars. So don't go throwing the term around without ensuring that you actually are referring to a licensed Jaws of Life product.

K: Apparently the Associated Press had decided it's Kriss Kringle, not Kris Kringle. Perhaps to provide some distinction for hip-hop duo Kris Kross.

L: Lamebrain is in the style guide! I resolve to use it more often in my work!

M: Look, "mailman" is not the preferred term, because so many women have the job. Use letter carrier or postal worker instead, though to me, postal worker has unfortunate connotations of insanity and instability. So I propose we stick with letter carrier.

N: My proposal about letter carriers is further backed by an entry in this section, which alerts me to the fact that there is such a thing as the National Association of Letter Carriers.

O: This one is for my dad. Regarding the words "Orient" and "Oriental": "Capitalize when referring to the Far East nations of Asia and nearby islands. 'Asian' is the preferred term for an inhabitant of these regions. Also: Oriental rug, Oriental cuisine." (Dad likes to claim that he never got the memo that we should be saying Asians instead of Orientals)

P: Did you know that the Pap test was named after George Papanicolaou? The U.S. anatomist who developed the test? Aren't you glad you don't have to go in and ask for the Papanicolaou test?

Q: Quran is the preferred spelling for the Muslim holy book; only use Koran if a specific organization prefers it or if it's in a specific title spelled that way.

R: The R entry brings us the correct spelling of many fun and funny words, including reconnaissance, riffraff, roly-poly, rostrum and rubella.

S: Here are some things that might come in handy if you're ever playing pub trivia:
The Seven Seas are the Arabian Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, the Bay of Bengal, the Mediterranean Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the South China Sea.
The Seven Sisters are the colleges of Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Radcliffe, Smith, Vassar and Wellesley
The Seven Wonders of the World are the Egyptian pyramids, the hanging gardens of Babylon, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Colossus of Rhodes, the statue of Zeus by Phidias and Olympia and the Pharos or lighthouse at Alexandria.

T: In proof that the Associated Press likes to take all the fun out of languages, they advise the use of "until then" as opposed to the much more jolly "theretofore"

U: You shouldn't write "user friendly." You should write "easy to use." But I think user friendly is better. Here's a sentence: "Sometimes, by not being intuitive with its rules, the Associated Press is not user friendly."

V: Voice mail is two words, suckas! Even if your word processing program recognizes voicemail, as this one does!

W: Weirdo is in the style guide! I shall use it more.

XYZ: The AP crowds these letters together cause it got lazy at the end. The most interesting thing on these two pages is that botanically, yams and sweet potatoes are not related, although several varieties of moist-fleshed sweet potatoes are popularly called yams in some parts of the United States.

Hopefully we all learned something! Thanks Associated Press!