Thankfully, in the office where I work as a communications specialist for a public library, I am surrounded by people who love the written word as much as I do. As our team creates copy for newsletters, brochures, and even social media, we get to ponder and discuss the placement of commas, apostrophes, and semicolons. We debate, and sometimes we argue. When all else fails, we go to the ultimate source: the Associated Press Stylebook.
The AP Stylebook is a substantial volume for journalists, students, and writers that, to me at least, deserves its own podium, open to the page about nonessential clauses, marked with a rich leather bookmark, a single light trained on its text. Instead, it stands upright on my desk, crammed beside file folders and various notepads. As an improvised bookend, I prop it up with the mug I use to drink my daily cup of tea â it has âNo Dramaâ emblazoned in gold letters on its side.
Despite its humble green and gray paperback cover, the AP Stylebook suffers a weighty burden: it attempts to hold our language and its rules within its pages, a thankless and virtually impossible job. It does some of the work of a dictionary, but it is so much more, since it addresses punctuation, grammar, journalistic values, and editing marks. It keeps score of how our language is shifting as we catapult through time and space.
One only has to pick up a copy of Beowolf or Shakespeareâs plays to see how drastically our language has morphed over time; besides being good literature that survives the test of time, these texts serve as a time capsule, ancient words suspended for all eternity in a Jurassic Park-like glob of petrified amber.
Over the next few months the 56th edition of the Associated Press Stylebook will begin bearing the wear and tear of my thumbs, frantically flipping through its pages for answers. Is it âself helpâ or âself-helpâ? âMisinformationâ or âdisinformationâ? Neon post-its will pop out from between its pages where Iâve marked important sections.Â
Like an overtired toddler, English refuses to sit still and quietly and conform to arbitrary rules. Our language is very much a living organism, constantly growing and stretching, pushing boundaries while still clinging to tradition. My favorite section is at the very beginning: Whatâs New. Here, the editors outline the ways language is changing to reflect our evolving world. For instance, our use of pronouns is expanding, as well as our vocabulary to represent gender and sexual orientation. In the past few years, words like âsuperspreader,â âCryptocurrency,â âbitcoinâ have crept into our lexicon. Some terms, like âanti-vaxxerâ lived a short life â according to the edition that sits on my desk, the term is no longer used, at least not in journalistic or professional writing. Same goes for âchild-freeâ and âchildless.â The gypsy moth is now referred to as a spongy moth, in keeping with the advice not to use âgypsyâ in any sense.
Some may find these changes to our language distressing, but I find it thrilling. Our language is freewheeling and disobedient, like us. Our language observes the way our understanding of life is changing, and it changes accordingly. In 2023, Merriam-Webster reported adding 690 new words to the dictionary! Each new word is an affirmation: keep stretching and pushing the limits. We are not meant to stand still and maintain the status quo.
New slang is a fascination to me. I am honored that my grown-up 20-something kids take the time to explain to me the proper usage of âclutch,â âslay,â and ârizz.â But other than using them as an inside joke with my kids (they enjoy laughing at my feeble attempts), I am terrified of adopting these terms out in the real world. These words are the rightful property of the younger generations, and Iâm trying my best to stay in my lane and not sound ridiculous.
The first version of the AP stylebook in 1953 contained these words: âThe English language is fluid and changes incessantly. What last year may have been very formal, next year may be loosely informal. Word combinations, slogans, and phrases are being added and becoming part of the languageâŚ
âBecause of the constantly changing usage, no compilation can be called permanent. Nor can any one volume be infallible or contain all the wisdom and information of the ages.”
What a humbling job it must be, being one of the editors who compile the AP Stylebook. Their work will never be perfect or final, because English will never be finished. Each edition merely takes the pulse at a moment in time; just as soon as it leaves the printing press, it has already started its slow march toward becoming a relic of the past.
