Just Some Drive-By AP Hate
I am now my school newspaper's copyeditor. I get one credit hour to be a grammar Nazi, and if I fail to Nazi hard enough, I can get in trouble. This wouldn't be a problem except that I'm required to do my grammaring in AP style--short for Associated Press.
For example, Sally, Billy, and Aeris are all perfectly recognizable names. That's the normal way to write that sentence. AP style insists that the sentence should be "...Sally, Billy and Aeris." It hurts me a little bit every time I have to skip or edit out that last comma.
There are other glitches in the system, too: like there are no italics or square brackets, because those don't transfer over news wires. It's accepted that those are allowed to stay, though.
Currently, I'm posting this during my biology class (what a bad student I am getting to be) while I should probably be backediting the old articles, written before I came on board. (Not editing them in the paper, but in the website.)
BONUS RANT: whoever does the site posting either doesn't know or doesn't care to make in-text links (potholes!) so they just leave these big, messy blue web addresses out in the open, so I'm making it my mission to pothole the hell out of the blog whenever necessary.
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For example, Sally, Billy, and Aeris are all perfectly recognizable names. That's the normal way to write that sentence. AP style insists that the sentence should be "...Sally, Billy and Aeris." It hurts me a little bit every time I have to skip or edit out that last comma.
There are other glitches in the system, too: like there are no italics or square brackets, because those don't transfer over news wires. It's accepted that those are allowed to stay, though.
Currently, I'm posting this during my biology class (what a bad student I am getting to be) while I should probably be backediting the old articles, written before I came on board. (Not editing them in the paper, but in the website.)
BONUS RANT: whoever does the site posting either doesn't know or doesn't care to make in-text links (potholes!) so they just leave these big, messy blue web addresses out in the open, so I'm making it my mission to pothole the hell out of the blog whenever necessary.
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