Most Common Associated Press Style Requirements

Most Common Associated Press Style Requirements Put a space before the open parenthesis and after the close parenthesis: The Department of Housing and...
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Most Common Associated Press Style Requirements Put a space before the open parenthesis and after the close parenthesis: The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) listed housing available in College Station. Telephone numbers require parentheses around the area code and a space before the open parenthesis and after the close parenthesis. (409) 845–4611 Put a comma in numbers of more than three digits. 100 … 1,000 … 10,000 … 100,000 Do not use %…⊄ Some newspapers do not have those symbols in their software. Put all periods and commas inside all quotation marks. He said, “Wait.” “Wait,” he said. The title of the book is “Help.” She said, “He replied, ‘Wait.’ ” Put colons and semicolons outside all quotation marks. Put question marks and exclamation points inside or outside quotation marks, depending upon the sense of the sentence. The colon ( : ) introduces a list; the semicolon ( ; ) separates thought units. Put long titles after the name, lower-cased, and with commas before and after. Rick Perry, governor of Texas, said

William McClain, lieutenant general of infantry, said

Put short titles before the name, uppercased, and abbreviated as appropriate. Texas Gov. Rick Perry … Lt. Gen. William McClain … Lt. Gov. Jane Doe … Professor Douglas Starr … Mrs. Andrew Hampden Abbreviate Street … avenue … boulevard in addresses 4215 Chestnut St. … 1066 Napoleon Ave. … 1215 Marshal Foch Blvd. State with city. And separate the state with two commas. Shreveport, La., is near Texas. Month in date: Nov. 15 … June 12 … July 4 Do not abbreviate, even in addresses. Road … drive … lane … trail … alley Spell out when used alone. Street … avenue … boulevard … state … month Main Street … Texas Avenue … Grand Boulevard … Louisiana … November Abbreviate United States as adjective. U.S. Coast Guard … U.S. Supreme Court Spell out United States as noun. The United States comprises 50 states.

Use standard abbreviations of states. Ala. … Ariz. …Ark. … Calif. …Colo. … Conn. … Del. … Fla. … Ga. … Ill. … Inc. … Kan. … Kyj. … La. … Md. … Mass. … Mich. … Minn. … Miss. … Mo. … Mont. … Neb. … Nev. … N.H. … N.J. … N.M. … N.Y. … N.C. … N.D. … Okla. … Ore. … Pa. … R.I. … S.C. … S.D. … Tenn. … Vt. … Va. … Wash. … W.Va. … Wis. … Wyo. Do not abbreviate. Texas … Alaska … Hawaii … Idaho … Iowa … Maine … Ohio … Utah The two-letter state abbreviations, all-caps, no periods, no spaces (LA … AR … TX … CA … NM … NY … etc.) are abbreviations of the U.S. Postal Service only. Use them only in full addresses. Use two commas with appositives. Dr. William Gates, president of Texas A&M University, said today Use the comma before the conjunction (and, but, for) in compound sentences. The pronoun for people and animals that have names is who; for things and animals without names, that. Those are the shovels that are broken. She fed her cat, Percy, who is ill. They are the students who were evicted. They fed the animals that were suffering. The dash ( — ) separates thought units and tangential phrases. Look up the dash in the AP Stylebook before you use it. The dash is made with two hyphens and no space before or after. Some word processors provide a real dash, an M-dash (the width of the capital M). The hyphen ( - ) joins words. It is made with no space on either side. 10-year-old girl … 6-foot-tall man The dash is made on the Macintosh by holding down the shift and option keys and touching the hyphen key: —

The hyphen between numerals, really an N-dash, is made on the Macintosh by holding down the option key and touching the hyphen key: 1997–98 … a 6–5 vote. Compound adjectives before the noun are hyphenated and singular. 2-year-old girl … full-time job … first-quarter touchdown … 5–foot-tall man Compound adjectives after the noun are not hyphenated and plural, as appropriate. The girl is 2 years old … he works full time … the touchdown came in the first quarter … the man is 5 feet tall

The plural of foot is feet. Do not write: The man is 5 foot tall. Try it with inches. It would be silly to write: The man is 5 foot 6 inch tall. No hyphen in ly adverbs. easily remembered rule … widely known woman … highly regarded official Suspensive hyphenation requires two hyphens and a space after each hyphen but the last. First- second- and third-grade pupils are released at 2 p.m. She received a 10- to 20-year prison sentence. It is incorrect to write second-and third-grade pupils … 10-to 20-year The reason is that second and third each modifies grade, and 10 and 20 each modifies year. It is the same as saying second-grade and third-grade and 10-year and 20-year. Besides “second-and” and “10-to” are not words.