In this week’s bonus, AP Stylebook editor Anna Jo Bratton goes behind the scenes on the questions she fields most. We look at the Oxford comma (no, the AP doesn't ban it) and healthcare becoming one word. We look at how the committee researches style decisions, the challenges of language guidance during active conflicts, and how reader feedback through the "Ask the Editor" column shapes the book.
In this week’s bonus, AP Stylebook editor Anna Jo Bratton goes behind the scenes on the questions she fields most. We look at the Oxford comma (no, the AP doesn't ban it) and healthcare becoming one word. We look at how the committee researches style decisions, the challenges of language guidance during active conflicts, and how reader feedback through the "Ask the Editor" column shapes the book.
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[Computer-generated transcript]
Mignon Fogarty: Greetings, Grammarpaloozians. I am here today with Anna Jo Bratton, editor of the AP Stylebook. I am so excited to talk with her about all things AP style. If you listened to the main episode, you got the new announcements that people would have heard at ACES and we talked a lot about how the committee works. Now we're going to talk about some of the more evergreen topics, those style questions everyone always asks about and also how the "Ask the Editor" column works. So Anna Jo, welcome to the Grammar Palooza segment.
Anna Jo Bratton: Oh, thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
Mignon Fogarty: Before we start, why don't you give everyone a little bit of background about how you got to this amazing job as the Stylebook editor?
Anna Jo Bratton: Sure. I've worked for the Associated Press for almost 20 years. I've been a reporter, an editor, I've edited spot news, I've managed big spot news stories, I've been the enterprise editor. About 10 years ago, I joined the Stylebook committee. I've always been really interested in language and how language works and also a bit of a stickler for correct capitalization and punctuation and all those good things. So after 10 years of that, I just recently in, about a year ago got this job as the AP Stylebook editor. And it is a little surreal still sometimes to be the one leading the guidance that I learned in college to follow.
Mignon Fogarty: So, let's talk about the one thing everyone always asks about and I think often get confused about with AP style is the Oxford comma. I know you and I are probably both tired of talking about it, but everyone wants to hear about it. So what is the deal with the AP Stylebook Oxford comma?
Anna Jo Bratton: I always tell people and sometimes this comes as a huge surprise, but the AP does not ban the Oxford comma. We don't. We say that in a series, if you need it to make it clear to the audience, then you should use it. The AP rule is that in a simple series where the comma isn't necessary, you leave it out. And this goes along with a lot of AP guidance on capitalization, punctuation, hyphenation. If it's not necessary for the understanding of the sentence, we recommend leaving it out. But if it is necessary, absolutely use it. That serial comma can be the difference between people understanding what you're talking about and not. And at the end of the day, it's the audience and the people who are reading your work that really matter. So if you need to use the comma, use the comma. You can take it from me, the AP Stylebook editor, if anyone criticizes you.
Mignon Fogarty: And does that philosophy come from the need for economy when most journalism was in print and columns are very narrow? Is that the source of that thinking typically throughout AP style?
Anna Jo Bratton: I think that's part of it. I think it's true that when we're talking about transmitting things by the character that sometimes AP style is based on minimalism. But I also think it is writing in a clear way and not using punctuation or capitalization or other things that aren't necessary to make things clear. So I think it's a little bit of both, a little bit of it is the history of print and the AP as a wire service and part of it is really clarity. And I am very much a favor of simplicity in writing, writing in a way that is clear to your readers. So I don't think we'll be changing our guidance on unneeded Oxford commas anytime soon.
Mignon Fogarty: I mean, I think that's probably one area where AP differs from Chicago. Chicago, people are writing things that might be more literary and maybe that clarity or economy of words isn't as important. But for the AP, you're trying to communicate facts. You've got to keep it simple.
Anna Jo Bratton: Exactly. I do think there is room in AP style for creativity and for beautiful writing and I know AP writers who've written some of the most beautiful things I've ever read. As I've said, at the end of the day, I say this a lot, if you follow AP style to the letter and at the end, your reader doesn't understand what you're saying, then you've failed at using AP style. So we really are about not just rules, but about rules making our writing clear and understandable and giving a starting point to everyone. I think right now as people sort of argue about facts and argue about what's true and what's not true, we need to start from a common understanding. And so if we can all agree what a word means, then we can argue about how it may apply to something else. But I think it's really very important to have that starting place and to understand that language is important. It can be really powerful, it can bring people together, and it can be really damaging and divisive. So my goal is always that anything that I write or that the AP writes should be understandable to the widest possible audience. It should be easy to understand but also it should be accessible to someone for instance who English isn't their first language. One thing that is unique about the AP, we have a huge number of international clients. So we have, you probably know, in the AP Stylebook a section on clichés and why not to use them. For the AP, you shouldn't use clichés because they're lazy, number one. But if you're talking about AP writing or journalistic writing, if you're using a cliché, you're immediately telling anyone who maybe their English isn't their first language and they don't know the root of that, you're telling them "This isn't for you. This isn't written for you to understand.” And that's a problem when we're talking about journalism and factual journalism. So I feel like it goes a little deeper than just do it because the AP says so. Do it because you want to be understood.
Mignon Fogarty: When you said that there was some beautiful AP writing, you sounded pretty moved. It sounded like you might have something in mind. Were there stories you were thinking of when you said that?
Anna Jo Bratton: I'm a little biased because I was the editor on this story, but one of our reporters, Matt Sedensky, when the US withdrew from Afghanistan, he went to cover the—they call it dignified transfer, although in the AP we don't use that term because it's a bit jargony. Every soldier who is killed overseas comes back and is tended to by the same Army chaplain who for every soldier who was killed in Afghanistan, every Marine, every person from any branch of the military, this same chaplain had overseen that. And Matt went to talk to him about what that was like and all of those people. The subject matter is very important and it showed the cost of that war in a way that I hadn't felt before, but just the way he wrote it really I think conveyed the experience from a different perspective, the perspective of the families who had lost someone. I think this story really focused on this chaplain who met them, many of them, and who tried to each time be comforting and say something meaningful. And it was one of I think one of the best pieces that we did coming out of the withdrawal and was really proud of Matt and it was a good one to work on.
Mignon Fogarty: I'll see if we can find that and put a link to it in the show notes. That sounds like it'd be a good one to read. What are some of the other things people just ask you about all the time when it comes to AP style?
Anna Jo Bratton: We have a feature on our website that's called "Ask the Editor" and people send in questions all the time. A lot of them are about the Oxford comma and "when will the AP get with the program?" And some of them are about, ”I work for a college publication…” This is actually one I answered recently. “...And I interviewed—we're doing a profile of a person. And I interviewed someone about this person and throughout the interview, they used the wrong pronoun for that person. What should I do?” And I spent some time talking to other reporters at the AP about this and my answer was, we never at the AP suggest letting someone change their quotes when you interview them. However, in this case, that is a factual error. If someone said the wrong age or the wrong name or pronunciation, I would call them back and say, "Are you aware that this is an error and would you like to correct it?" And so I do get questions like that. It's another one where it's sort of, here's the rule, how do I apply it in this case? And in that case, that was my suggestion. Better to just ask and see if the person just didn't know perhaps.
Mignon Fogarty: Interesting. If you get the same question over and over at "Ask the Editor," is that something that will drive you to reconsider an entry in the Stylebook? You know, it's like we got five things about this. We better think about it.
Anna Jo Bratton: Very often. I cannot tell you how many questions or just, "diatribe" is a strong word, but how many people have gotten on us about healthcare still being two words. "Why doesn't the AP get with the program and make healthcare one word?" So we heard you. We announced at ACES, but by the time this comes out, people will know that the AP says healthcare is one word. So to all those people who took time to write to us, thank you. We heard you. Healthcare: one word.
Mignon Fogarty: How many questions do you get a week? Do you answer them all or should you feel extra special if the AP answers your question?
Anna Jo Bratton: I consider "Ask the Editor" kind of like "Dear Abby." I mean, I try to pick the ones that I see often. If I see three or four different people—we get dozens of questions I would say most weeks. So I pick the ones that I see a lot, ones that haven't been answered before. I can go back and look and say, "Okay, if somebody searched the Stylebook 'Ask the Editor' questions, actually the answers come up," so they would be able to find the answer. But something that hasn't been answered before, I especially like tricky questions that I don't know the answer to. Surprise! I'm not a linguist and I'm not a grammarian. I care deeply about language, but when it comes to the history of words, I always have to consult on those things. So I like to pick things that I don't know the answer to and I have to go figure it out.
Mignon Fogarty: That was going to be my next question: how often do you have to go do research to answer questions? And when you do, where do you go? Where do you start your research?
Anna Jo Bratton: We are very lucky to be partnering with Merriam-Webster, so I have access to some of their editors, including Peter Sokolowski, who is wonderful and who answers all of my language questions and helps me. Sometimes historians who can talk to me about where a word came from and what it meant throughout history. Particularly we talk to a lot of experts in different fields. So if it's a healthcare term, including healthcare, we're going to be talking to medical associations. If it is how to refer to—for instance we made a decision to take the hyphenation out of African American or Asian American. And we talked to a lot of particularly journalism organizations that had expertise in that and worked with them. One of the things that I wish people knew about journalists is we don't actually know for ourselves—even in the Stylebook committee, we're not just making these things up. We are going out and we are talking to as many people as we can and then we're making the best decision we can from all that information. But very rarely do style rules just come down from on high on the tablets and are presented by the Stylebook committee or the Stylebook editor. A lot of people's expertise goes into those decisions.
Mignon Fogarty: Is there any decision you made or were involved in that you think about? Like, "that one took a long time"? Is there one that really took a lot more time than others or a handful?
Anna Jo Bratton: This last year, it's really been language around conflict. Because of the war in Gaza, because of the war in Iran now, people have a lot of questions and because the AP has journalists covering all these conflict conflicts, we need to be really clear about the language we use. The war in Ukraine is an interesting one. A lot of the locations in Ukraine are the Russian transliteration of the name and to Ukrainians, that's very offensive to use that transliteration because it comes from a time when they were under Russian occupation and they prefer, obviously, the Ukrainian transliteration. But as I've talked about, at the end of the day it's the audience, you have to be clear. Sometimes we have to use the term that everyone's been using for the last 40 years. For instance the anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster is coming up and we had a lot of questions about whether to use Chernobyl, which is what all of us learned in school, or Chornobyl—it's a different pronunciation, it's a different spelling for the Ukrainian transliteration. And in that case, our guidance is to use the Chernobyl, the version that everybody sort of knows. Because it can be confusing to people to read the other.
There are other cases, like the name of the capital Kyiv, we now use the Ukrainian transliteration. Those are difficult decisions that are not only language and clarity, they also are historical. There's a lot of history that plays into that. And there's a lot of people who feel really strongly about it and it can be difficult to take in all of that information and then make a decision. So many many times it comes down to: will people know what we're talking about? And if we use the Ukrainian transliteration, will people go, "Oh, was there a second nuclear disaster that I didn't know about that was called something different?" In that case, we really felt like we had to stick with what everybody knew.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah, in the main episode, this is great, you talked about how you sort of added some of your pet peeves to the style book from you and the committee this, this year. You sort of gave yourself that treat. Are there any pet peeves you have that aren't in the style book that you feel like you, you can't put in there?
Anna Jo Bratton: I have a lot of pet peeves. You'll, you won't be too surprised to know that you can't really get to being the AP style book editor without feeling strongly about language. I'm trying to think though of one that I haven't, I mean, I have a lot, but I don't know if there's any that I can't to add. We have this sort of argument in the style book committee of, so some people will ask me while I'm speaking to a class or something, what's the answer on this? And I'll answer, and I always say, “But you know. I have to go back to, we need to go back to the committee and come up with some official guidance,” and some people on the committee say no. It's like, you know, I'm the pope now if I say it, it's true. So, it's a lot of pressure.
Mignon Fogarty: Get you a hat.
Anna Jo Bratton: Exactly. That's not, I can't think of anything I don't think I can add, but I definitely have some that we will address. There have to be some benefits to the job. Right?
Mignon Fogarty: Let's move on to one of my favorite parts of the show is getting your book recommendations. So what are some books that you have loved or that you give as gifts to people? Give us your recs.
Anna Jo Bratton: This was a hard one because you will also not be surprised that I read a lot. I went through and I just thought of books that I'm really loving right now. There's a series by Deanna Raybourn, the "Veronica Speedwell Chronicles," and it's these stories about a woman who in the Victorian time she's a detective, she solves mysteries. And what I love about them besides that it's sort of Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes, but a woman, there are words in there that I have to look up. All kinds of great words that I constantly am going to my phone and looking up the definition of them. I love books that do that.
Mignon Fogarty: That sounds like a great one for my audience.
Anna Jo Bratton: It is. One of the ones I wrote down was "salubrious." I did not know what that meant and so I had to go look it up. Maybe your audience all knows what salubrious meant, but that was one that I had to look up.
Mignon Fogarty: I would have to look it up too.
Anna Jo Bratton: I love thrillers, mysteries, scary books. I love Stephen King. I was talking to my husband about my favorite books and I said the scariest Stephen King book that I ever read, which I think is "Pet Sematary." Some people would say "The Shining" or "It," but "Pet Sematary" is—not going to ruin anything, but you can imagine.
Mignon Fogarty: I haven’t read it.
Anna Jo Bratton: Well, the hero throughout it makes some sort of questionable decisions and at the end maybe considered the villain. But each decision I would challenge you to say you would make a different one. The way that Stephen King, who's an amazing writer, writes it, you kind of agree with the main character even though it all ends terribly and it's really terrifying. And then I was thinking journalism books that I like. One of my favorites is—a lot of people have read "All the President's Men." They actually wrote a sequel to that called "The Final Days" and it outlines after Nixon resigned and sort of what happened after that. And then a gift: I love crossword puzzles. I give “New York Times” crossword puzzle books. I know a lot of people do the crossword online. I love doing it also on paper. So some of the best gifts that I've ever gotten are “New York Times” crossword puzzle books.
Mignon Fogarty: Anna Jo Bratton, editor of the AP Stylebook, thank you so much for being here. The AP has a fabulous social media presence too. Where can people find the AP online with all their great daily posts?
Anna Jo Bratton: We have accounts on X and Facebook and Instagram. You can go and search for AP Stylebook, their official accounts. What you're getting there is coming from the AP and from the Stylebook staff. So go and check that out. You can also look at our most recent topical guide at apstylebook.com and right now it's about the conflict in the Middle East. So a lot of our guidance on that is available to anyone and for our subscribers we have a lot more material including some information about workshops that we are putting on. And I have to say one of them that we're having Grammar Girl on for, so we're excited to welcome you pretty soon to our world.
Mignon Fogarty: Yay! I'm excited to be there. And those topical guides, they rotate, right? So the one available on the website to everyone is always the most current one, right?
Anna Jo Bratton: That's right. So for instance we did one on the Pope when the previous Pope died and the new Pope was chosen. We had a topical guide explaining conclave and explaining all of the things about that. The Olympics, we have a topical guide that tells people terms about the Olympics. So if you go there, you'll always see sort of what is the most recent topical guide but also what's in the news and what would be most useful.
Mignon Fogarty: How fun. Well, thanks so much for being here.
Anna Jo Bratton: Thank you so much.