WebProNews

Tag: AP Stylebook

  • AP: ‘Illegal Immigrant’ No Longer an Acceptable Term

    The AP, apart from being a news organization, also publishes a highly influential stylebook used by schools and journalists across the country. And they have just made a pretty significant change to it.

    Starting now, the AP Stylebook no longer supports the use of “illegal immigrant” to describe people living in the country illegally.

    In fact, the AP Stylebook no longer allows for the use of the term “illegal” to describe any person. The word “illegal,” according to the AP, should only be used in reference to an illegal action – but not in reference to an actual person.

    The AP had been using “illegal immigrant” for some time, after deciding that other popular terminology like “undocumented” failed to provide a credible alternative (they could have plenty of documents – just not the one that grants them citizenship).

    Here’s what the Stylebook’s updated entry for “illegal immigration” says:

    illegal immigration Entering or residing in a country in violation of civil or criminal law. Except in direct quotes essential to the story, use illegal only to refer to an action, not a person: illegal immigration, but not illegal immigrant. Acceptable variations include living in or entering a country illegally or without legal permission.

    Except in direct quotations, do not use the terms illegal alien, an illegal, illegals or undocumented.

    Do not describe people as violating immigration laws without attribution.

    Specify wherever possible how someone entered the country illegally and from where. Crossed the border? Overstayed a visa? What nationality?

    People who were brought into the country as children should not be described as having immigrated illegally. For people granted a temporary right to remain in the U.S. under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, use temporary resident status, with details on the program lower in the story.

    So, according to the AP, people can enter the country illegally, but they are no longer to be referred to as illegal immigrants.

    The move is already sparking political debate, with conservatives upset. The Media Research Council, who says their job is “exposing and combating the liberal media bias,” called the move “politically correct mumble.” Others claim the move had a purely political motivation.

    On the other side, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus called the decision a “great move forward.”

    For their part, the AP says that it’s all about “ridding the Stylebook of labels.” For instance, another move nixed the term “schizophrenic” and replaced it with “diagnosed with schizophrenia.”

    [Photo via Thomas Hawk, Flickr]

  • AP Stylebook Adds More Tech Terms

    The 2011 print edition of the AP Stylebook is available today, and while the focus is on a brand new “Food Guidelines” section, the “journalist’s bible” has updated their social media guidelines section as well to include some new tech terms.

    Last year, the AP Stylebook added a bunch of new social media guidelines to their rules for journalists. Among those guidelines was a change from “web site” to “website,” hyphenating “e-reader,” and allowing fan, friend, and follow to be used as verbs.

    They also added social media terms “trending,” “retweet” and “unfriend” to the Stylebook. The latter settling the debate once and for all that “unfriend” is more acceptable than “defriend.”

    In March, the AP added some notable tech terms to their online edition of the Stylebook. They decided to officially go with “email” as opposed to “e-mail” and they took the spaces out of “cellphone” and “smartphone,” making them one word entities on their own.

    In the newly revised 2011 print edition, the AP has added some more social media / tech terms to the Stylebook. Among them – geolocation, geotagging, link shortener, stream and unfollow. I’ve been guilty of hyphenating geo-location in the past, so I’m now glad to have one less character to deal with. They announced these changes via Twitter last night:

    @APStylebook
    AP Stylebook    New Social Media entries: end user, geolocation, geotagging, link shortener, stream and unfollow. #APStyleChat 20 hours ago via CoTweet · powered by @socialditto

    As I said before, tech word additions aren’t the focus of the fully revised Stylebook. The focus is food. FYI, the AP added words such as locavore as the preferred term for a person who strives to eat locally and “blind bake” to describe the action of baking a pie crust before filling it. They also added “huitlacoche,” a fungus also known as “corn smut” that grows on corn and is considered a delicacy in Mexico. Mmmmm…corn smut.

    But the addition of these new terms continues the integration of our fourth estate with the wonderful word of social media.

    [Image Courtesy]

  • AP Stylebook Updates Tech Words

    If you were devastated when you found out the Associated Press frowns upon the Oxford Comma, you might agree with some of their later decisions. Some notable tech items have been changed by the venerable manual.

    On Friday, the AP Stylebook announced that they were finally dropping the hyphen out of “e-mail” and going with “email,” which most of us have been unapologetic in using for some time now.

    @APStylebook
    AP Stylebook    Language evolves.Today we change AP style from e-mail to email, no hyphen. Our editors will announce it at #ACES2011 today. 3 days ago via CoTweet · powered by @socialditto

    Today, AP Stylebook announced more changes, taking the spaces out of “cell phone” and “smart phone.”

    @APStylebook
    AP Stylebook    Three style changes: smartphone, cellphone and Kolkata. They are live on Stylebook Online and will be in the 2011 book in May. 6 hours ago via CoTweet · powered by @socialditto

    The AP Stylebook is not the only stylebook out there, but they are the one most commonly followed by most newspapers. Most likely, many other stylebooks that address proper forms of such words will follow suit. As goes the AP Stylebook, so goes the collective lexicon of the nation as that is the style many Americans will see everyday when they read or watch the news.

    Why are little changes like this so important? They show a shift is our familiarity and reliance on technology. “E-mail” is not only clunky, but denotes an archaic understanding of what it really is. “E-mail” is electronic mail, simply a type of mail. By removing that little hyphen, “email” becomes a force on its own, not simply an extension of another well-established entity. Same goes for “smartphone” and “cellphone.” When you remove that space, you give more legitimacy to the item. It shows just how integral technology is to everyone’s life.

    Ok, that sounds quite dramatic.

    But maybe not that far off base. If the official suggestion page for the 2011 AP stylebook is any indication, they are going to have their hands full will tech terms. The top suggestions involve the Like button, “swype” for android phones, and a plea to standardize the past tense of “tweet.” Should it be “tweeted?” “Twittered?” Perhaps “Twote?” We are looking at you, AP Stylebook.

  • New AP Stylebook Covers Facebook And Twitter Usage

    The Associated Press has released its 2010 edition of its Stylebook with a new section focused on social media for the first time and has announced that "website" is now one word.

    The new social media guidelines section includes information and policies on using Facebook and Twitter, how journalists can apply them to their work and how to verify sources found through them.

    Also included are 42 separate entries on such terms as app, blogs, click-throughs, friend and unfriend, metadata, RSS, search engine optimization, smart phone, trending, widget and wiki.

    AP-Stylebook-2010 The AP said the change from "Web site" to "website" was based on increasingly common usage both in print and online.

    "In making the change, the Stylebook team considered responses from our staff as well as readers and users of the Stylebook. It was clear that website has become the widely accepted usage," said Darrell Christian, AP editor-at-large.

    "We solicited reader suggestions for the new Social Media section and received 237 responses, with a large number of commentators urging us to change to website," he said.

    "Web" remains a capitalized proper noun when used as a shortened form of World Wide Web, and e-mail, with the hyphen, remains unchanged for electronic mail, along the lines of similar phrases such as e-book, e-reader and A-list.