And just what is the associated press stylebook?
Just another thing the rest of us can ignore...
: )
It's the holy q'ran of how news writers and reporters must write for the vast majority of newspapers. They set the style of news stories, what grammar to use, what words are forbidden to use, what is politically correct, what forms of address one must use, etc.
They revise it from time to time to reflect the general mores of the time. It dictates what general English in the Main Stream Media will be in written form. . . It includes what dirty words are not allowed and what will now be permitted. How one is to refer to the child growing in the womb, for example, as "fetus" and not a "foetus" and NEVER as a "pre-born baby" or "unborn infant". It also may require that that item growing in the womb be properly referred to as "an unviable tissue mass" if it's in the first trimester and the woman decides to abort. These are all fair-game for the stylebook.