AP Stylebook 2020 Compliment Sandwich (Review)
There’s always that memorable day of the year, usually in June, where writers and editors all come together to experience one of life’s greatest joys: picking up the new edition of the Associated Press Stylebook. (Print, of course, since nobody likes the digital version.) It’s also the beginning of a long tradition where everyone tears the AP a new one for making updates that RUIN the English language, and for removing ones that kept grammatical law and order.
Now, the descriptivist editors among us know that language changes is inevitable, and it can also be productive in making writing as clear and ethical as possible. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some clunkers and missteps along the way.
After a few months of consideration, I had mixed feelings about AP 2020. There was stuff that I liked, and stuff that was really cringy and bad. (It’s OK, AP, I still love you.) So I’m going to employ the most underrated critical method, the compliment sandwich, to review the new AP. Good thing, bad thing, good thing, bad thing, until we’ve made a half delicious, half disgusting 10-layer grammar sandwich.
Let’s preheat the oven and get cooking.
Good Thing: AP Cooks by the Book
I’m pretty sure AP is probably one of those monsters that skips preheating the oven and adds 10 minutes to the bake time. I know this because the AP has made its life goal out of telling you why you’re wrong for thinking “preheat” is a logical word, and you should feel terrible for using it. “Instead, we just heat the oven,” says the AP Stylebook. “You’re getting it up to temperature, so you’re heating it.”
Wow, you’re smoldering with that hot take, AP — I guess someone remembered to preheat the genius oven. The thing is, as logical as “heat” might be, that’s not how we use the language. If we use the term “preheat,” what we’re doing will immediately make sense to our readers. And if you think about it, preheat’s not that illogical anyway, since it designates the preparatory act of heating the oven before throwing in the delicious all-mushroom pizza. I’m not surprised the language turned out that way.
In the 2020 updates, the AP allowed usage of preheat, but not without adding a cup of salt to the recipe. “Yes, it’s redundant,” says the AP SmugBook. “But, overwhelmingly, we heard it’s what you want to use.” So next time your food writer uses the term “preheat,” tell her that’s all right, I guess, but she’s a failure to the publication and all it stands for. It’s what AP would want.
Bad Thing: AP Thinks Bisexuals are Scary on Second Reference
AP has made a lot of progress in 2020 with its new guidelines on gender and sexuality, but second reference abbreviations isn’t one of them. On second reference, AP decided it was time to shorten “bisexual” to “bi” on second reference, which is a step in the right direction, but then they determined “The shortened version bi is acceptable in quotations.”
Though AP didn’t elaborate, I presume this is because they anticipated general audiences wouldn’t immediately recognize bi. I’m not so sure — it is 2020, after all. People know what this term means, whether because they’ve researched and are supportive of LGBTQ+ or because (sadly) they’re skeptical of people who add “IA” to the acronym (Two letters, oh the humanity! What will we tell the children!?) or that the “gay agenda” is being pushed on them.
Anyway, my surrounding “gay agenda” in quotation marks to indicate sarcasm demonstrates that we do more with quote marks than just mark emphasis, so I suspect putting quotes around bi will have some unfortunate side effects. In addition to emphasis and describing new terms, using “scare quotes” commonly expresses sarcasm, irony, or disbelief. In many cases, it’s easy to tell what’s a scare quote and what isn’t, but text is a notoriously difficult medium to convey figurative meaning. The term bi is more recognized than ever, so it’s strange AP would unnecessarily risk wordings that make reference to bisexuality sound sarcastic or disbelieving, especially as concerns about bisexual erasure persist.
On the bright side, AP 2020 shortens transgender/cisgender to trans and cis on second reference, without quotation marks, so there’s that.
Good Thing: AP Embraces Humanity
Are you ready for the most hilariously defensive AP Style ruling ever? Feast your eyes on AP’s woman, women section, which insistently allowed “mankind” until last year.
“Treatment of the sexes should be evenhanded and free of stereotypes. This doesn’t mean that valid and acceptable words such as mankind or humanity cannot be used. They are proper.”
Wow, AP, tell me how you really feel about the feminists taking away your words. I didn’t feel the passive aggression enough when you forwarded “mankind” as “valid and acceptable” without explanation, or especially when you went out of your way to add a short, snippy closing remark in “They are proper.”
Oh no. Feminists, I’m sorry to say you’ve been destroyed by
Nah, not really.
Even though the AP presented the validity of “mankind” as self-evident, there’s an implied rationale, so now it’s time to do the AP’s work for them. The common argument is that mankind has historically been used gender neutrally, and yeah, this is supported by the corpora. “Womankind” has been around for centuries, but it’s never been standard. However, this data is then leveraged to say that, being gender neutral language, women are not left out when using the term “mankind.”
But it’s precisely this perception that “man” is neutral that’s the problem, especially when we frequently use the term “mankind” to describe human accomplishments. “Mankind” inhabits two spaces, claiming to be inclusive but also failing to include women in its language.
“Language is power, and when we speak about ‘mankind’ or ‘the achievements of man,’ what we’re doing is confirming the subconscious bias that men are intellectually, morally, and physically superior to women,” Sam Dowd, didactics expert from the language learning app Babbel, told Bustle in an interview. “By using such language, we exclude women (and, for that matter, people of non-binary gender) from history.”
So that sucks. Bad AP.
But I’m happy to say this year, our favorite style guide has turned over a new leaf, removing the defensive sentences from the woman, women section and adding humanity, while specifying “not mankind” to the gender-neutral language section.
I don’t know about you, but I think this is a win for humanity.
Bad Thing: AP Makes Chicken Kiev in Kyiv
So, AP decided to change the capital of Ukraine, “Kiev,” to “Kyiv.” OK, that’s good — that’s a more faithful representation of Ukrainian language use.
Then there’s “chicken Kiev,” the sumptuous and artery-clogging chicken (or Quorn) cutlets stuffed with butter and herbs. The logical thing to do would be to change its spelling too, right?
Of course not. This is the AP we’re talking about. It’s still chicken Kiev.
But benefit of the doubt, like many other American takes on ethnic cuisine, chicken Kiev has a weird history, and I’m all about weird word histories here.
Cathy Erway writes in Saveur that even though chicken Kiev is named for Ukraine’s capital, it’s not necessarily a Ukrainian food.
“Chicken Kiev is not really a traditional Ukrainian dish,” Ukrainian food writer Olia Hercules tells Erway. “The first time I heard of it was when I moved abroad.”
Instead, the name might be Ukrainian, but the cooking process is French, and the place of origin is the United States. Erway writes that most Soviet sources point to chicken Kiev being invented in 1947 to the Ukrainian minister of foreign affairs. But as cookbook author Darra Goldstein says, “But the thing is, they were being served as ‘cutlets a la Kiev’ in 1946 in New York City at the Russian restaurant Casino Russe, and were probably introduced much earlier by émigrés fleeing the Revolution.”
All right. So chicken Kiev is not a Ukranian food exactly. It’s an American-Ukranian dish cooked with French influences which American chefs decided to name chicken Kiev because reasons. Maybe that’s why AP decided not to change the spelling. But “cutlets a la Kyiv” are just that, made with Kyivian influences (among others) at Russian-style restaurants. In a very real sense, it’s named for Kyiv, and should change with its namesake. If AP takes issue with the weird, perhaps inauthentic naming, they should have ruled that chicken Kiev should be called its alternate name, “côtelette de volaille.” Of course, this is too nonstandard to be a good style update. They probably should have just bit the usage bullet and called it chicken Kyiv. But that’s just me. I’m a simple boy. I change the city, I change the chicken.
Good Thing: AP styles the Climate Crisis
I’m happy with AP 2020’s climate change updates, this year including even more scientific basis and nuance. The climate change entry now recommends that if a source doubts climate change, they should “be specific about an individual group of people’s beliefs,” instead of referring to them as “climate change deniers,” “climate change skeptics,” or “climate change doubters.” This is super cool, because it challenges news pieces to interact directly with the range of often poor arguments made by those who don’t believe in climate change. This doesn’t have to invoke false balance, either — this ruling has the potential to get articles to make the best possible environmentalist arguments instead of simply labeling someone as a denier, which could mean any number of things, and continuing on without elaboration.
More importantly, the AP now allows the terms “climate crisis” and “climate emergency,” terms used by scientists, policymakers, and others. Some might see these as loaded terms, but they are accurate ones, so why not? I’m also happy AP drew the line at metaphors like “war,” since some research on linguistic metaphor suggests that the “war” metaphor contributes to an “us versus them” mentality, which could be bad for environmentalists who want to convince people across party lines that environmental reform is important.
Bad Thing: AP Puts the Meat in the Main Entries, Cross-contaminates
In addition to the main entries, AP has a few sections dedicated to specific industries like sports or religion, complete with their own A-Z entries. Back in the day, “food” and “fashion” had one of these until AP RUINED everything in 2020.
Outside the blogosphere, I write and edit food articles and restaurant coverage, and I can’t tell you how nice it was to have all the pertinent style rulings all in one place. Now I’m flipping all over the place looking for different food entries.
Okay, okay. Depending on what kind of publication you write for, this could just as easily be a good thing. If something food-related comes up in a normal news piece, it’s convenient to be able to look up “F” for “French toast” right in the main entries without having to know there’s a separate food section. Plus, it’s been my experience in normie news editing that non-food editors tend to forget that the food section exists, and then change “blue cheese” to “bleu cheese” like a noob. And I certainly find myself forgetting about the sports and fashion sections myself.
So maybe it’s good if you don’t normally edit food or fashion stuff. But it’s still classified under bad things because the AP ruined my life, and also because sports and religion are still in their own section.
Why those but not these? Perhaps the world will never know, but AP, if you’ll take one piece of advice from this article, don’t take out the sports sections next time around. The sportsball people will have vengeance.
Good Thing: AP Burns the Midnight Oil — But on Which Day?
Imagine, if you will: It’s New Year’s Eve. The stars are sparkling, snowflakes pepper the ground and melt on your nose, it’s a little chilly but you’re dressed warm, and, let’s face it, you’re probably stone drunk. Also, it’s probably super late at night, like at midnight. Oh hey, the countdown is starting.
But wait. If it’s midnight, is it New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day? This isn’t as easy of a question as you might think. Literally, it’s New Year’s Day of course, but culturally speaking, we’re partaking in a New Year’s Eve celebration. Moreover, even if we’re technically wrong, if it’s midnight on a given day, most of us think of it as the same day. Instead, we see the new day as having begun when we wake up in the morning. It’s kind of how we’re wired.
To be 100% clear and factual about what day we’re referring to, these are the considerations we need to make as editors, and AP’s ruling on midnight was a wise decision that considers audience perceptions and the nuances of language. According to AP, “We now say: Avoid using the term if it would create ambiguity about what day something is taking place, since some users’ understandings may vary. Instead: 11:59 p.m. Thursday or 12:01 a.m. Friday.”
Naturally, everyone hated AP for destroying the ironclad, unchanging monolith that is the English language (of course). Just look at these social media responses to AP’s Facebook status to see the degree to which the AP has failed:
Welp. I think this was somewhere between the “more than” versus “over” fiasco of 2016 and white-gate on the social media Richter scale. I and the rest of the “lowest common denomintor” will leave the internet now, having been seriously put in our place.
Bad Thing: No. 1 Way to Destroy a Relationship
Have you ever been in just, like, a really amazing relationship with someone — someone who’s funny and caring and considerate and just all-around awesome, but he has this one horrible awful annoying habit you can’t stand? Maybe it’s subjective and a “you” problem (or maybe not), so you try so hard to see past the irritating quirk, but you can’t help but want him to burst into flames whenever he does this dreadful thing? This is me with the AP Stylebook and its “No. 1” guideline.
For like ever, at least as long as I’ve been active as an editor, AP’s entry for No. reads “Use as the abbreviation for number in conjunction with a figure to indicate position for rank: No. 1 man, No. 3 choice.”
Why in the world is it capitalized? Like, I get when it’s described in rankings, like “Fergalicious is the No. 1 song on the Top 40 list.” There it’s at least a proper noun-y ranking. But come on, “No. 1 man”? Here it’s used informally — there’s no official list of top men mentioned. (We’re not talking about GQ here.) It should be a lowercased “no.” by default until it’s a formal ranking. AP’s rule for “No.” defies their core principles on lowercasing and capitalization and I don’t like it.
And then one day comes where said partner does something that suggests he’ll stop with the awful habit. You read into the action and think he’s changed and it’s amazing. For the AP, this was 2019 when AP decided to use the % sign instead of spelling out. I thought ohhh, I see your game AP, so now that you’re doing symbols, you’ll change “No.” to “#” right?
But then nothing happens. He’s broken your heart too many times, just like all the men in your life. You were fine when AP changed “more than” to “over,” and you could put up with the chicken Kiev malarkey, but “No.” is where AP crossed the line. And so you stay together in a unhappy marriage so copy desk doesn’t live in a broken home. On the side, you’re fooling around in an emotionless affair with MLA. But you stay because AP took your side on “preheat.” Maybe he’ll change? (He won’t.)
You better shape up, AP, or I swear to Sorlac I’m filling out those divorce papers.
Terrible Thing: Sorlac is Angry
AP 2013 debuted one of the most important style rulings of our time. Crucially, they recognized the power of Sorlac the Grammar Devil in making or breaking the quality of our copy editing, and so AP made this ruling to appease our cruel and benevolent deity.
Since then, at the cost of a few lifestyles editors, AP publications have limited their error rate almost entirely. Thank you Sorlac.
However, on this cursed year of 2020, AP did the unthinkable and removed its sacrifice and Sorlac sections entirely. This is inconceivable! This is playing with fire, and now Sorlac is angry. He will strike the AP with burning vengeance, and news will be filled with typos for 66 moons. We should be very afr-
Wait, you’re telling me that Tweet came from Fake AP Stylebook!?
Uh oh.
WASN’T ME GUYS
