Should you refer to that golf club as a "three-wood" or a "3-wood"?
Is the condition properly written "Down's syndrome," "Down syndrome" or "Down's Syndrome"?
If you miss (or never worked for) that cigar-chomping editor who recognized and fixed every AP style error, join America's most popular grammar authority, Mignon Fogarty, for a course on writing like a reporter.
Grammar Girl brings clarity to matters such as:
- The difference between writing styles and rules, and why AP style matters
- Exceptions to AP's guidance to omit the serial (or Oxford) comma
- Tricky apostrophes, and whether it should be "Jones' slippers" or "Jones's slippers"
- Words you should avoid because they are offensive or libelous
- Collective nouns and singular nouns, and why the zombie horde is (not "are") coming for us
- The proper use of company names, and whether it should be written "IKEA" or "Ikea."
- How to use “camel case”
The AP Stylebook is the leading reference book for most reporters who receive your pitches. Even the PR department for University of Oxford follows AP style, meaning Oxford's press releases omit the "Oxford" comma.
Master the quirks of company names and products. Should you capitalize the first letter in "iPhone" or "eBay" when the brand name starts a sentence? Should there be a comma before "Inc."? (Should that designation be included at all?) How do you make "McDonald's" possessive? Fogarty reveals the answers to such questions in her clear and memorable style.
Find out when age is relevant, how to handle names of family members and whether it's "JFK" or "J.F.K." Learn how to deal with “millions” and “billions” in headlines.
Find out why the T in "The Home Depot Corp." is capitalized but "the Starbucks Corp." doesn't get the same treatment. Learn to write sensitively about diseases and conditions, and find out why you should revise that reference calling an employee “wheelchair-bound.”
Avoid ageism and sexism with easy rewrites that make grammatical sense, and gain the peace of mind that comes with knowing you're doing things the right way.
JOIN MIGNON FOGARTY, AND SMARTEN UP YOUR STYLE WITH THIS ON-DEMAND RECORDING.