Ok, I know this may seem crazy... but can someone point me to a good place that outlines or explains AP Style? I know kind of what it is supposed to mean. It keeps popping up everywhere, making me hesitant to reply to these opportunities.
You can also find guides to help you in the writing section of your local bookstore. If you think you are going to be doing a lot of work requiring AP, it might be worth the investment.
Thanks lightless! Rep given snarke, not sure if I will... but I wanted to get a good understanding of "what" it was before even replying to someone requires you to know it.
Again, thank you lightless... You mean to tell me I've been passing on all these when in reality, all it really means is to use proper grammar, punctuation, etc...? I kind of thought it was something pretty basic, but then I would've felt really dumb if it turned out to be a certain structure or formatting.
It was understandable that you assumed that AP style is a specific writing style - specific to the Associated Press. So did I, because newspapers and media organizations often have their own preferred writing style, the style which they insist their journalists use, and it's called their `house style'. I'm a photojournalist and have worked for several newspapers, all of which had their own house style. One that I worked for one preferred speeches to be prefixed with a colon, ie. `a spokesperson said:"the situation is intolerable" , while another preferred them to be prefixed with a hyphen, ie. `a spokesperson said - "the situation is intolerable." I suspect that the second newspaper believed that the hyphen was somehow more urgent, than the colon, which was perhaps regarded as a little old-fashioned.