A look at Associate Press Style

Associated Press Style and I have a love/hate relationship.

AP Style is the guideline for news writing that journalist and PR professionals use for news writing. It is both incredible useful, and extremely difficult to master the rules.

 

What’s helpful

It is important for public relations writers for four distinct reasons.

It provides the following for writers:

1. Consistency– all writing will be written using the same guidelines. This means that all writing, grammar, and style will look the same throughout all news writing.

2. Brevity– the writing will be straight-forward and concisely written.

3. Accuracy– all information in AP Style news writing must be accurate.

4. Clarity– provides information in a clear way.

 

 

What’s difficult

However, there are some things that tend to trip me up when it comes to this style of writing. The trickier parts for me tend to be the exceptions to the rules. I am able to accurately remember most rules after viewing them a few times. However, there are many different rules when it comes to numerals and addresses that tend to trip me up.

There are many different instances in AP style where uses of words, capitalization and punctuation rules change depending on the place within a sentence.

For instance:

• If I wrote a sentence about the president, this would be considered correct in AP Style. 

“President of the United States, Barack Obama is holding a press conference.”

• However, if  I rewrote the sentence like this, it would be incorrect.

“Barack Obama, President of the United States, is holding a press conference.”

• The correct way to write this sentence is:

“Barack Obama, president of the United States, is holding a press conference.”

This is an example of an AP Style rule that tends to trip me up.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog!

Although I have not had much experience with strategic communications, I have had some. Most of my experience comes from my years in high school. I was editor-in-chief of my high school newsmagazine, The Courier. Through this experience, I was able to learn much more about AP style, which has carried into my college career with the classes I am enrolled in. Along, with this, I ran The Courier’s Facebook and Twitter page. I was also in charge of much of the advertising work that was a part of funding the newspaper. I had to contact many places to advertise and was able to learn a little more about the advertising process. I was also involved in a club called DECA and took the marketing class involved with the club. I was able to learn even more about what marketing and advertising looks like through this experience.

Both of these experiences have catapulted me into the interest in the major of strategic communications. It was through my enjoyment of marketing and journalism that I decided to pursue a career in PR. I hope to someday enjoy a job in the field of PR. I am excited to learn more about the complex world of strategic communications and grow to understand the field of marketing and PR better.