Folks outside the newspaper industry don’t hear about it much, if they hear anything at all. It’s The Associated Press Stylebook.
The version that sits near my computer contains 524 pages. Printed in 2015, it measures six inches wide by nine inches deep and is an inch and a half thick.
When I first saw one of these, it was about the same size and held 50 pages at the most.
It contains all the rules for punctuation, abbreviations, hyphenation, spelling – almost any rule you can think of connected with how the written word is supposed to appear in a newspaper.
It’s a book that drives English majors crazy when they hear about it. That’s because newspaper rules and English rules don’t always agree.
Once a year, the stylebook is updated, which often means a few new words are added that have become commonplace in America. Often these are little more than slang and really have no place in reputable writing, so they don’t appear in these pages.
On the other hand, words are seldom, if ever, removed from the book, while there are some I would certainly like to see removed from it and our language.
Tornadic activity for example. It’s the buzz word weather forecasters have created to describe a tornado.
A tornado is an activity all to itself. Quit trying to dress up the big wind storm that will move a house into the next county. Call it what it is.
The same goes for snow event. The weather either gives snow or it doesn’t. Here again someone with too much time on their hands has come up with a cute phrase that is totally out of place.
Slickery is another description I’ve heard slip into weather talk. It’s been used to describe roads, which, I suppose, aren’t slick yet. There has not been enough rain, so pavement must be getting close to slick, but not there yet.
The roads are either slick or they aren’t. There is no place for cute when you’re sliding down a bank because you didn’t know the definition of slickery.
“No problem.” This has sadly almost always replaced the polite “you’re welcome” I learned growing up. I hear it after saying “thank you” for having been provided a service for which I paid.
Well, you bet it’s “no problem.” I just paid good money for whatever you provided.
Let’s be polite and return to what our parents taught us.
And last on this short list, but certainly not least, it’s time to get rid of “impeach.”
This seems to be the only word certain members of Congress have known for the last four years. They need to replace it with words such as health care, Social Security, Medicare and immigration with the word fix preceding them.
It’s an election year. The people can decide for or against impeachment by themselves. It’s called a ballot box, and that’s the same word we’ve used for almost 250 years.
You’re welcome.
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Glenn Harbison is publisher/editor of The News Observer. He can be reached at 706-632-2019 or by email at glenn@thenewsobserver.com.