News-reading assignment 2:
AP Stylebook rules

Read newspapers or newspaper-based websites every day and set aside stories you like. For this assignment do not use The New York Times, independent blogs, magazines or radio or television news sites. Those publications do not always follow AP style. (Even newspapers' blog sections may be a problem, as noted in the final example below.)

Goal: Find examples of at least 10 AP Stylebook rules in your daily news reading.

How: Pick three stories that interested you in your past week's reading. This time you don't have to summarize the story or your reason for reading it, just use it to demonstrate style rules for handling titles, addresses, punctuation, numbers and more, especially examples of "exceptions" to a basic rule.

In a new blog post, write an introductory sentence or two with a link to this assignment sheet so that visitors will know what you are doing. Then publish each story's headline as a link to the story, and identify three or four rules (using Stylebook headings and subheadings) that each story demonstrates. Write full sentences. The format is up to you; just be clear. See the examples below.

Find two, three or four different rules per story to reach the total of 10. DO NOT use the same rules given in the examples below. Avoid obvious grammar rules ("Capitalization... Proper nouns," a person's name is capitalized), and avoid repetitions or close variations. That is, demonstrate one unusual street-address abbreviation from the "Addresses" section, not three separate examples for a street, an avenue and a boulevard.

DUE Tuesday, Feb. 19

Example:

• The Roanoke Times story headlined The question of Evans Spring demonstrates the basic "Numerals... Other Uses" rule, which is to spell out numbers for 10 and above: "130 acres of woods and fields." The story also uses the standard format for giving "times" and "days of the week." A meeting is coming up at "1:30 p.m. Tuesday." Lower case and periods are used in "p.m.," and the day of the week is spelled out, not abbreviated.

 

Example with errors

If you see an AP Stylebook error in a story, point it out!

• In this Dinosaur puppets Roanoke Times item, the date is given as "Sunday, March 3, 2013 at 3:00 pm in Olin Theater," breaking three AP style rules. Since this is part of a "blog" section within the newspaper, perhaps it was not checked by the copy desk. A comma should follow the year; trailing zeros should be deleted frome the time, and there should be periods in "p.m." See: "times," and "months" or "Punctuation: Comma... With Full Dates."