Style Manuals

Trivia question: How should we refer to someone from Ecuador?

A farmer on a horse looks at the Tungurahua volcano eruption on December 10, 2010, in Banos, Cordillera, central Ecuador. (Photo by Kseniya Ragozina)[/caption]

As a freelance copy editor, I follow the guidelines of The Associated Press Stylebook in perhaps a third of my professional work. I also edit using The Chicago Manual of Style, the Publications Manual of the American Psychological Association, other style manuals, or no preferred style manual at all in some cases. The AP’s book is always close at hand, though, because it is one of the most useful reference books available for carefully considered questions of language, culture and current events.

There is a little-known field on the website of The Associated Press Stylebook that lets users outside AP offer suggestions for updates for the style guide. I’ve dug my way through various layers to find it, and I’ve offered my thoughts on various minor questions of language and usage. The most recent was one of the more inconsequential, I thought, but it was also a relative no-brainer. AP Stylebook took my suggestion, even thanked me in a tweet. So, now, those who follow AP Style should say Ecuadorian rather than Ecuadorean, as was previously advised.

This seems trivial, and it certainly is. But setting style and sticking with it provides readers with clarity and signals to them we care about getting things right. Despite AP’s preference over the decades, Ecuadorean never was used as much as Ecuadorian, and Ecuador’s English-language tourism website uses Ecuadorian.

This illustrates a strength of the AP Stylebook over other reference sources — it responds quickly when it needs to. It was updated almost immediately after I brought Ecuadorian to the Stylebook editors’ attention. Every spring, the book publishes anew with scores of changes and additions. Between editions, the online version updates as needed. Some recent additions include advice on reggaeton, the musical style, and on the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement, the successor to the North American Free Trade Agreement (the initialism USMCA is acceptable on first reference with a definition, but spelling it out is preferred).

I’ve had many writers and copy editors tell me they avoid the AP Stylebook because they don’t edit for news. But I wonder why they would ignore a reference book created with thoughtful advice on how we use language. If we don’t edit in AP Style, we don’t need to follow the advice, but on pesky issues of language, I prefer all the advice I can get.

Mark Allen is an editor, writer, and teacher focused on helping people communicate with clarity and honesty. He has trained hundreds of editors and writers on a variety of topics, including the latest and most important elements in the Associated Press Stylebook and the Chicago Manual of Style. Mark has led conversations about copyediting and writing at conferences and workshops in Detroit, St. Louis, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Portland, Columbus, Chicago, Pittsburgh, New York City, and York, England. He was the first freelancer elected to the executive board of ACES: The Society for Editing, and Mark currently teaches advanced copyediting for UC San Diego Extension’s copyediting certificate program.

Should We Capitalize ‘Black’? Publications Should Be Talking About It

Sunday, June Post a comment

Many publications have decided recently to capitalize the racial identifier Black. This is a perfect time to review this internal style question.

In the wake of nationwide protests over police brutality and racial disparity, prominent publications have adopted capital Black to refer to people of color who trace their roots to Africa. Among them are The Los Angeles Times, NBC News, The San Diego Union-Tribune, and the Gannett newspaper chain, including USA Today. They join the Boston Globe and Seattle Times, which made the change several months ago.

The descriptive term has traditionally not been capitalized, just as white has been lowercase to refer to lighter-skinned people who trace their roots to Europe. The Chicago Manual of Style points out that “terms such as black and white, when referring to ethnicity, are usually lowercased unless a particular author or publisher prefers otherwise.” In contrast, the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association has long called for capitalizing racial designations.

The Associated Press Stylebook goes with lowercase for descriptive terms regarding race. But AP Stylebook editors are gauging the mood. In answers to Ask the Editor queries at apstylebook.com, the editors write: “We continue to discuss the question, as we have been for some time. Some black people believe strongly that the term should be capitalized. Some black people believe strongly that it shouldn’t be capitalized. There also are other considerations, such as how to handle white. In-depth study and discussions continue.”

The argument for uppercase has been that the word identifies a distinctive group of people and should follow the pattern of other racial or ethnic identifiers, such as Asian and Latino. But other racial or ethnic identifiers are based on geographic location or language, which are generally capitalized. The terms black and white are vaguely descriptive and are not based on location or language. Linguistically, the general trend is toward lowercasing words as they become more widely used. To capitalize Black goes against this pattern.

One issue with capitalizing Black is what do we do with White? Some argue that the latter is not as distinctive as a self-identified group, except perhaps among a few racists who are militant in their identity. But leaving white lowercase risks presenting one race as the norm. Writing on March 23 on the website of the Center for the Study of Social Policy, Ann Thuy Nguyen and Maya Pendleton argue that “to not name ‘White’ as a race is, in fact, an anti-Black act which frames Whiteness as both neutral and the standard.”

Looking to precedent

There is a strong precedent for capitalization that can provide us guidance now, a century later. The Spanish and Portuguese word for the color black was adopted in American English as a racial term and was commonly written lowercase. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, writers and activists—including W.E.B. Du Bois—campaigned for Negro to be capitalized. In 1929, Du Bois told the editors of Encyclopedia Britannica that he considered “the use of a small letter for the name of twelve million Americans and two hundred million human beings a personal insult.” There are now 44 million Americans and more than a billion people worldwide who have ancestral ties to Africa.

In grappling with this decision, publications also might look to the New York Times in 1930, which acknowledged it was late to capitalization when it decided to uppercase Negro, joining “many of the leading Southern newspapers as well as most of the Northern in according this recognition.” In a small announcement of the change in the March 7, 1930, New York Times editorial page, the editors wrote: “In our ‘style book,’ ‘Negro’ is now added to the list of words to be capitalized. It is not merely a typographical change; it is an act in recognition of racial self-respect for those who have been for generations in ‘the lower case.’”

In the 1960s, the word Negro began to fall out of favor, to the point of now being considered an offensive throwback. It was spoken by Martin Luther King Jr. in his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, but James Brown helped hasten the reclamation of black when he sang “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud” in 1968. Only recently has African American (with or without a hyphen) become a commonly used term, but it has had a mixed reception.

Looking for guidance

News organizations and other publications look to the AP Stylebook and other big style guides for leadership on social, political, and cultural language trends. The AP Stylebook likes to reflect the norm rather than push cultural change, but it has demonstrated an awareness of what writer Karen Yin calls conscious style—favoring words that acknowledge underrepresented communities and avoiding words that disparage or belittle. Yin, creator of the Conscious Style Guide, suggested in 2017 that publications not wait for the big style guides to change because the big style guides will change when they see publications adopting the capital B.

Yin also suggests that Black-focused magazines can show the way.

“If your editorial directive is to call people what they want to be called—including names, pronouns, and labels—then look to Black media outlets like Ebony and Essence for accepted usage and avoid overriding their terminology,” she wrote.

Arguments about linguistic trends and descriptive vs. nominal uses seem petty in the face of the real, often violent inequality in American society. And capitalizing Black now might seem reactionary or an emotional response. But as is usually the case, the right time to engage in the discussion is now.

AP Stylebook Adopts the % Symbol Instead of the Word

Thursday, December Post a comment

The biggest single change in the 2019 edition of The Associated Press Stylebook (AP Stylebook) is the nixing of the word percent in favor of the symbol that means the same thing.

There are exceptions to the new guidance—the symbol is not used 100% of the time and percent is no longer the default.

The 2019 AP Stylebook, which debuted May 31, is used by news organizations nationwide and by countless marketing and public relations organizations. You read material written in AP Style every day. The AP Stylebook is not the only style guide out there, of course. Many publications rely on other guides, but it has exceptional influence over what we read and write.

The embrace of the symbol instead of the written word is one of the most significant changes we’ve seen. Where lowercasing internet (which AP did in 2016) is an example of AP Stylebook following a trend and acknowledging the ubiquity of the small “i” spelling, adopting % does not seem to have come from popular demand.

The switch grew out of a suggestion at the 2018 annual conference of ACES: The Society for Editing. Each year at the ACES conference, which is held in the early spring, the Stylebook editors present updates and gather feedback. Stylebook Editor Paula Froke recalled that there was widespread agreement in the room that the symbol’s time had come to an end.

“My later scan of usage indicated that indeed, the sign was far more widely used than I realized,” Froke wrote in an email. “I discussed with our team and all were in favor. I discussed with our business news staff, which is one of the biggest users, and they were strongly in favor. They tested on the wire for a week and it went well.”

Joining the $ symbol

Froke said AP likens it to the use of the $ sign. The symbol is the default when we talk about specific dollar amounts, and it’s the only symbol we regularly use that way. AP and the rest of us commonly use cent(s) instead of ¢ and and instead of &. AP Stylebook likes No. for number, not #. We use the @ symbol for social media handles, but not generally in place of the word at.

Journalists and others have been writing out percent as long as they have been following AP Style, though those near retirement age may remember the word was per cent in the early 1970s. British and Canadian English still favor the two-word per cent.

Is AP Stylebook leading change rather than reflecting usage? Maybe. In edited text, use of the symbol vs. the word may depend on the subject matter. In financial or scientific context with heavy use of data, it’s common to see %. In marketing, the symbol may have more impact. In the humanities, though, the written word may be more likely. Searching the Google Books corpus shows both forms are used, and which one is more common depends on how the search is constructed.

But a general Google search for “19 percent” yields 4.5 million hits, while a search for “19%” returns 217 million. The symbol is even more likely in a Google News search.

AP’s new advice is close to that of the Publications Manual of the American Psychological Association: Use the symbol only when it’s preceded by a number. That doesn’t actually say don’t use the word, but it seems implied.

The Chicago Manual of Style has it both ways. It says use a numeral for percentages, but choose the word or the symbol based on the context: “In nontechnical contexts, the word percent is generally used; in scientific and statistical copy, the symbol % is more common.” (9.18)

The MLA (Modern Language Association) Handbook also offers a choice based on the type of document. In nonstatistical or nontechnical uses, the number and the word are written out, so you could say, “I am right at least four percent of the time.” In other cases, use the numeral and symbol.

The Yahoo! Style Guide, cutting edge when published in 2010, allows for either word or symbol, but makes two points in support of the symbol: it saves space and in a passage that contains more than one percentage, the symbol stands out, which makes it easier to spot for comparison.

Exceptions to the rule

AP makes an exception for percentages at the start of a sentence, where words are preferred (if rewriting is not the better option). Casual use also calls for the word rather than the symbol. Presumably, you could support about 75% of what the AP Stylebook has to say, or you could be behind it 110 percent. Or there is “a zero percent chance you won’t forget the new rule and spell out percent.”

AP’s entry also reminds us that percent and percentage point are not the same thing. For example, a tax increased from 6% to 7% would be a 1 percentage point increase and a 16.7% increase. There is unlikely to be confusion if someone writes a 1% increase with context, but 16.7% is more accurate and a more useful number for helping the reader understand how much revenue is involved. If something increased from 20% to 40%, it doesn’t go up 20%— it doubles, or increases 100%.

Some other points in the AP Stylebook entry on percent:

For decimal amounts less than 1%, use a zero and a period: 0.4%.

Use decimals not fractions with percentages.

Use percentage, not percent, when the construction is not paired with a number.

For a range of percentages, it’s acceptable to write “12% to 15%, 12%–15%, and between 12% and 15%.”

Expressing percentages with the symbol will take some getting used to, but the dollar analogy is a good one. It seems wordy to write 4 dollars instead of $4. Writing 4 percent may soon seem as excessive.

AP Stylebook Changes References to Race, Gender, Ethnicity

Friday, December Post a comment

There were a few recent changes announced to the Associated Press’ stylebook. Many of the changes focused on race, gender, and ethnicities.

Here’s a rundown of some of the updates to the 2019 AP stylebook:

No more hyphens that denote dual heritage. Instead of hyphenating “African American,” it will now go unhyphenated. Same for “Asian American” or “Italian American,” and the like. (Note: The Chicago Manual of Style hasn’t suggested using the hyphen in recent years, but The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage uses hyphens in most expressions such as “Italian-American” but not in others such as “Jewish American” or French Canadian.”

“Dropping a hyphen does not appear to be a big deal but it reflects a growing acknowledgment among news organizations that racial and ethnic identities are individual, that the individuals have differing views on how to portray themselves, and that news organization should be aware of those desires,” writes Merrill Perlman in Columbia Journalism Review.

Change to Native American references. Formerly, you could use “Indian” to refer to “Native American” or “American Indian.” The update says the term shouldn’t be used as shorthand for “American Indians.”

People of color. You can say “people of color” but not use “POC” as an abbreviation. The 2006 stylebook featured “African-American” as an entry and said the preferred term was “black.” It said to only use “African-American” (yes, now “African American”) in proper names.

Latino/Latina/Latinx references. The stylebook now calls for “Latino” to be the preferred noun or adjective for people of Spanish heritage. “Latina” is the feminine form of the word, and gender-neutral “Latinx” should be confined to quotations and names of organizations or descriptions of individuals who request it and should be accompanied by a short explanation.

Kristen Fischer is a copywriter and journalist living at the Jersey Shore. She worked as a reporter and copyeditor for Gannett before launching her full-time freelance business in 2005. Her work has been published in Parents, New Jersey Monthly, Prevention, Woman’s Day, SheKnows, and Healthline.

Trivia question: How should we refer to someone from Ecuador?

Should We Capitalize ‘Black’? Publications Should Be Talking About It

AP Stylebook Adopts the % Symbol Instead of the Word

AP Stylebook Changes References to Race, Gender, Ethnicity

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