Grammar Girl here.
I'm Mignon Fogarty, and I'm teaching a writing workshop for the Associated Press on May 20th.
And I've been working with the stylebook editor, Anna Jo Bratton, because of it.
And I just thought it would be really fun to have her as a guest on the show to talk about all things stylebook.
Anna Jo has been the stylebook editor for about a year now and you know hasn't had an entire career in journalism and writing.
Anna Jo, welcome to the Grammar Girl podcast.
Oh, thanks so much for having me.
I'm a huge fan and I'm so excited to be here.
Oh, thank you.
Well, you know, why don't you give us some background?
Like, how did you get to this amazing job?
Yeah, so I've been with the AP for almost 20 years, and always as a reporter or an editor.
I worked many years as a copy editor at an editing desk.
I also worked as the AP's enterprise editor, so working on big projects.
I've edited spot news.
And about 10 years ago, I joined the Stylebook Committee as a member.
I've always been interested in words and language and writing what things mean and the evolution of language.
And so I started work on the committee a year ago when our former style book editor left.
I applied for the job, and here I am.
Sometimes it still seems a little surreal that now I'm the one trying to make all these difficult decisions.
Why don't you describe what a committee meeting looks like?
How often do you meet?
Do people argue?
There's definitely a lot of arguing.
No, we all like each other.
We have a brand new committee.
Me and one other person are the only ones who are left from the previous committee.
There's six of us and they come from all corners of the newsroom.
We have a sports writer.
We have a business editor, trends and culture editor, race and ethnicity editor.
So people from all over united by caring about language.
So we meet usually once a week.
If we're coming up on the rollout of a new style book, which is where we're at right now, sometimes much more, several times a week.
And then sometimes less if we're not in the middle of a big project.
Do you have homework between meetings?
We do.
I usually, before meetings, will send an agenda and ask people to read something or do some research.
In the past, we've had committee members who had an expertise or specialty.
And so they would take the lead on a certain section of the style book.
And then they will come back to us and sort of present what they found.
So everybody has their little niche in the committee.
Is it just a pure vote?
Is it, you know, 5-4 like the Supreme Court that decides, you know, what role gets made?
It's funny you ask that because when we formed the new committee, there are six of us total.
And Ted Anthony, who's on the committee, said, but Anna Jo, what if there's a tie?
And I said, Ted, it's not a democracy.
That's our joke now.
It's not a democracy.
We usually come to an agreement.
Usually there's a majority of us who agree on some issues.
We have senior leaders from the AP who are involved and they're going to listen to our recommendation, but their vote obviously may count for more.
And sometimes I make a decision, you know, if we can't agree.
But I would say most of the time we come to some sort of an agreement that we can all get behind.
Are there factions?
Are there people that you know like oh, this person is definitely going to be opposed to this, or something like that.
I don't know yet.
You know, it's been a year, but that's a good question.
In the past, there were definite factions.
And I was usually on the faction of just playing devil's advocate for whatever.
I really liked to take the opposite of it. whatever everyone else agreed with and try and think of.
And it's important because sometimes we come up with a new rule.
We review an old rule and try to update it, or we come up with a new piece of guidance.
And then after we put it out, people come in and say, well, what about this?
And didn't you think about this?
And if we didn't think about it, I feel like we haven't done our job.
And so, while I love all the feedback, before we put guidance out, I really want to have thought of every single outlier that could make someone misunderstand our guidance.
Yeah, you really want to pressure test it.
Are there rules that you know?
Made it pretty far through, and then you changed your mind at the last minute, after sort of that pressure testing process, and said oh, we can't make this change, you know, or you were going to and then you didn't.
So an example I can think of and this actually did make it through we put put some pretty specific guidance out on person first language, which is when you're talking about someone instead of saying you know, trying to think of an example.
Instead of saying an autistic person, you would say a person with autism.
So we put this out thinking that we had done our research and we're feeling pretty good about it.
And a lot of people came back to us, particularly in the autism community, saying many people don't prefer person first language and are actually offended by it.
And so we heard that and we changed our guidance to say you know, make sure you ask, like ask someone how they prefer to be identified.
So there is a case where, you know, we did the research.
We went to a lot of organizations, but we didn't hear that.
We heard it after.
And I was so glad that those people felt comfortable reaching out and letting us know so that we could go back and make that adjustment.
When you're not playing devil's advocate, what is your philosophy about language change?
Do you wait until you feel like okay, the AP has to make this change, or do you try to sort of get out ahead of things?
It depends.
I would say we are cautious.
We waited, for instance, on Singular They until it was pretty overwhelming that it was common usage.
Sometimes we get out ahead of things.
Our AI guidance, I would say, is out ahead of things.
I mean, we added the chapter and, I feel like, gave journalists a lot of guidance on how to write about AI before any of us knew what we were doing.
So I think in that case, that's something where we're going to push the envelope.
We're always going to be trying to add and update.
But on some other things, particularly if a word or a phrase has been around for a very long time, we slow roll it.
We don't hurry.
And that's actually one of the big announcements we made at ACEs. which is the underway.
Yeah, we're recording this before the announcement will be made, but it'll come out afterward.
And I can't imagine anything more exciting than being in the room when the announcement is made and all the editors are gasping and twittering about the change.
Is that maybe being the person who makes the announcement?
So let's talk about some of these new changes.
What do you think?
What's the big announcement this year?
So the big announcement is health care.
We have been hearing for many, many years and when I say many, I mean more than 10 that the industry uses health care as one word, that it's common usage.
Why is the AP not changing their style?
And so we have a brand new style book committee.
We went over this again.
We did a lot of research, and we are recommending that people use health care.
One word instead of two.
What about the other care words like daycare and child care?
Child care, daycare, also one word.
Oh, so those are getting closed up too?
Yep.
Oh, interesting.
And what was sort of the thought process?
Was it just that the industry does it that way or more?
I mean, there are a few things.
And one thing that always was there and we always talked about is that they're both words in their own right.
And yet when you put them together, they have a different meaning.
And so that is sort of the core of why would we make the change.
Over the years, like I said, usage has changed and we did a lot of research on that and just realized that it was time to catch up and make that change.
Yeah.
And you mentioned that you work with people in the industry.
You always get feedback.
Talk a little bit more about how you work with the different industries and how you do gather that feedback.
Yeah.
So the first group that I always go to is our AP journalists.
We have...
AP journalists in every country in the world, every state in the US, and we have experts in healthcare.
And so they can kind of tell me if something seems to be moving.
So I talk to them.
Then I might reach out to healthcare organizations, particularly big groups like AMA and others who are writing about healthcare a lot.
How are they seeing it?
How are they using it?
And what are the reasons behind it?
I learn new things all the time from my research.
It's a good reminder that I have a lot of experience being a journalist.
So I'm pretty good at asking questions and asking about things that I don't understand.
But I'm not an expert in health care by any means.
So getting that information is really useful to changing our rules.
Do you invite the people to your committees to chat, or do you call up the people you know, or you Zoom the journalists into your call.
How do you actually get it?
We definitely internally we bring people in all the time.
We have guest speakers internally, usually externally.
One person on the committee is taking the lead and they might be talking to you, know a number of sources and then bringing back to the rest of committee what they've heard.
But I'm not opposed to bringing in specialists.
So we'll see.
Maybe that's a 2026 goal for the style book committee.
I think it'd be fun for the experts to come in too.
Yeah.
You know, you made such a good point that the style book is for an international audience.
I think a lot of people, you know, in the U.S. forget that, that it's not just for us.
It's for people all over the world.
So the decisions don't always reflect just American thinking.
And I know you had to make a big decision recently about the war or not war thing.
Do you want to talk about what that decision was and how you made it?
Yeah, of course.
So I'll talk specifically about the current war between Iran and Israel and the United States.
When it started, you know, it was not a congressional declaration of war.
So technically, you know, it's not a war in the sort of capital W sense, that that it would be a named war.
We sat down and we talked and this was a pretty quick decision where we went through some of the things.
We look at the level of hostilities, the number of people who are impacted, whether this is a one-time attack or something that happens.
And pretty quickly started calling it the Iran War lowercase war, because it's not an officially named conflict.
I think sometimes the feedback I get is why is the AP in charge of deciding if something is a war or not?
And my response is always well, we're not, but we are, for ourselves and for our users, creating language and creating sort of a common understanding of what's happening.
And It diminishes the meaning of the word.
If we don't say, even though it's not officially a war, this is what is happening, then we're not being honest with readers.
We may be calling it a conflict or an incursion and not truly communicating the level of what's happening and how many people are impacted.
I always say that you know, at the end of the day, we have a lot of people who follow AP Style journalists and people in public relations and others.
And at the end of the day, it's the audience that is who I work for.
And so if people can't understand what we're writing about, to me as a journalist and as someone who cares very much about language, that's the most important thing.
So decisions like that, even though they're very different from decisions about say, commas or punctuation, you know a big part of what we do and a big part of trying to hopefully bring people together, to sort of start from a common place when we're talking about what's going on in the world.
And so if it were a congressionally approved war, then would war be capitalized?
That's a good question.
I guess it wouldn't automatically, but in the past we have, like you know, we consider the Persian Gulf War as capitalized.
So I don't think it would automatically.
I think then we would go forward and consider that.
And I also think that we may look back and, when it is clear that this war has a name, that everybody knows it by then, change our style on that.
Sometimes that happens after the fact.
Right now it's pretty new and I don't think any of us know how long it's going to last, what's going to happen and what it may end up being.
It's hard for us as editors, too.
We like things to be easy.
Not easy, but specific answers.
Every question should have a specific answer, and there's a right way and a wrong way.
In many, many cases, you know, our advice, our guidance changes.
It has to change because the world changes and you know, what's happening changes.
So we're always trying to keep up with that as well.
Let's talk about the speed of change, because the AP style book changes more frequently than some other style books.
And so, you know, who is the style book for and why does it need to change so often?
I mean, first and foremost, it's for journalists.
We are giving advice to first our internal journalists and then externally.
And then for around that, students and, like I think I mentioned, public relations folks, people working in government, who are all writing in this world of journalism.
And I think that is why we change and adapt more, because we always say journalists are writing the first draft of history.
And in doing that, we don't have the benefit of looking back and saying, oh, we should have...
We should have called that something different.
That actually was a war and we didn't get it right.
We have to make those decisions in real time.
I think that's why AP style updates more often and sometimes drives editors crazy.
Because I don't know about you, but I learned very long ago that there was a right way and a wrong way to to write underway or more.
You never said over.
You always said more than.
And those rules have changed.
And it's hard to change that once it's been hammered into your head by many journalism professors.
But language changes, language evolves, and so we go with it.
It is.
And I do like that.
I can feel like the AP has considered current issues and made a decision on what's the best way to talk about them.
So, you know, you need to talk about things that are new and it's good to have guidance.
I think I always say if you follow every rule of AP style to the letter and your grammar is perfect and your punctuation and spelling, but you fail at communicating clearly with your audience, then you haven't correctly used AP style.
At the end of the day, again, it is the audience.
It is their understanding of something.
And it's writing in a way that's not only correct but also honest, in a way that conveys things honestly to your reader.
That's really important to me as a journalist and really my guiding principle.
Absolutely.
And now, talking about things that are new, you have this new AI chapter, this thing that we all have to write about and think about.
So what are some of the announcements that are coming out about from the new AI chapter?
I can tell you a couple of things.
Some of them we are still waiting to roll out.
The new book comes out at the end of May, so...
So we're excited about that.
So a few things you know.
We have updated some of our reporting tips.
How you should write about AI.
And generally those are things to do with asking questions about what kind of language model is being used, asking specific questions about how the AI is built.
So we have a little bit more information on that.
We also have a few new terms we've added, like AI slop vibe, coding words that I didn't know existed.
That we'll be rolling out with the book, which is like I said.
It's out in a couple of weeks.
Oh, no other new announcements about AI from the ACES conference?
No, there are some more, but I have to save them for the actual books.
So there'll be announces at ACEs and then you have more announces later.
Okay.
That's right.
We kind of split them into, you know, we have some at ACEs and then some for the book.
There's no rhyme or reason necessarily to how we decide, but healthcare is definitely the big I think the big thing newsy one this year.
Okay.
Are there any other big announcements that are coming out at ACES, or even small ones that people might find interesting?
Yeah.
So we added some guidance on our accident crash entry.
People have been telling us for for a while that we should be more specific about gun accidents.
In fact, I have gotten just endless questions, but also, you know, really direct questions about why we still say it's okay to say gun accidents.
So our change in that is to be specific.
So not saying a gun went off, saying, you know, A person fired a gun and hurt this person.
The reason for that being the responsibility behind it.
If you say a gun went off, it's not clear necessarily that somebody fired that gun.
I mean, obviously someone did, but it may obscure the responsibility for it.
I actually wrote a blog item recently on using the active voice and how using active voice is not only better writing, but it's often more honest.
And so if you write a headline, for instance, saying 500 people were killed in the attack, that is maybe factually correct, but it may not be honest in the sense that the ex-army killed 500 people.
So the same with accidents and crashes.
If somebody is killed in a car accident and in fact that person died had stolen the car or was under the influence.
And then it's not an accident.
Most accidents.
There are a lot of decisions leading up to them, and it's important to be honest about that.
So that's one that I think it seems maybe to some people like a small thing, but I think it's a a larger part of using language, to be honest in how we talk about things.
Yeah, and you have that blog on the website.
People might not realize everything that is on the website.
What else do you have there?
So blog posts, we always have updates.
I do a lot of in-the-moment writing.
So we mentioned the Iran war.
We put out guidance on Israeli troops moving into Lebanon to fight Hezbollah.
And when was that an invasion?
At The beginning, we said what was happening specifically.
At some point, we started using the word invasion.
And then I think at some point, we would decide whether to use occupation.
So I'm doing a lot of that writing in the moment.
We send that out to our subscribers.
We also do topical guides.
And the cool thing about topical guides are...
They're available to our subscribers, but the latest topical guide is available to anyone.
You can see it on the AP Stylebook website.
So right now it's the conflict in the Middle East.
So as we're updating terms and giving guidance, people can go and check that out.
I added, for obvious reasons, the state straight of Hormuz lately.
I had a lot of questions on whether straight should be capitalized on second reference.
And we said no, you know, it's the straight of Hormuz, but straight lowercase if you mention it.
On second reference
So that's something that I think people you know journalists, but also others can go and look at and sort of keep up with the style that we're setting that connects directly to the news.
And thinking about the AI chapter again, and you've been in this industry a long time.
How are young journalists adapting?
Do you see that they have different needs these days, or do they have different strengths maybe, that they're bringing to the job?
How is the job changing and how are people adapting to that?
I think the young journalists I see coming in are very thoughtful about language.
They ask a lot of questions.
When I was coming into newsrooms, I think I followed AP style, but I didn't often question whether or not I should.
So I hear a lot from young journalists in the AP about why do we do this this way?
And We've always done it that way is not a good enough answer.
Journalism is a tough industry to get into these days.
Something I see from young people coming in is that in many cases they don't get the same One-on-one attention from editors.
And so because they're just fewer.
You know, throughout the industry there are fewer journalists or fewer editors.
And I know that for me, the way that I learned to write and the way that I learned to edit was through being told stories, all the things that I was doing right and all the things I was doing wrong.
So I do try to be available and I you know I meet with students a lot and I and I always say you can, you can reach out to me.
I'm happy to talk through issues.
And I actually mean that.
So that's something I think in, I think in journalism and the industry in general is There's less competition and more you know.
Let's all work together to try to cover things the best we can.
And so working with journalists from other outlets, whether they're young or more experienced, I feel like that's another part of my job that's really important to me.
Yeah.
Well, let's wrap up with a fun thought experiment.
If you could add one frivolous entry to the AP Stylebook.
It doesn't have to be serious, but just something fun.
What would it be?
I have actually added a few.
I don't want to say frivolous, but we did add.
One of my presentation items at ACEs is about our pet peeves.
I called it things in the style book.
That should have always been that way, aka your new style book committee's pet peeves.
So some of them are...
A couple of, a couple always means two.
It does not mean a few.
We added that.
One of mine is pet and petted in past tense.
So I hear people all the time saying, I went to the pet store and I pet a cat.
And I don't know where this comes from, but I was hearing it more and more.
And so we actually have now in the style book, it's petted.
In the past tense, it's petted.
I petted a cat.
That may seem like a small thing to some people, but that would be one of my pet peeves, that pet peeves that made it into the style book.
That's great.
Well, Anna Jo Bratton, thank you so much for being here.
This has been fascinating.
For our Grammarpalusians who support the show, thank you too.
And we're going to have a bonus conversation for you.
We're going to get Anna Jo's Book recommendations.
Oh, we're going to talk about the Ask the Editor column and how that works and how you might be able to get your question answered and more.
So if you're already a Grammarpalusian, you can look for that in your feed.
If you're not, you can sign up at patreon.com slash grammar girl.
And be sure to check out, you know, I am teaching this writing course for the AP on May 20th.
So Check that out, too, if you're interested.
I think, what, do people just go to apstylebook.com to sign up for that, Anna?
Yep, stylebook.ap.org.
They can come and you can get all the information you need about stylebook classes.
So if you want to come and learn new tips and really either you know, start to learn or strengthen your AP style knowledge, we really encourage you to join these workshops and we're thrilled to have you as one of our guest speakers.
Great.
Thanks so much.
