A Tribute to the AP Stylebook ... Er, Chicago Manual of Style
The 18th edition of the CMOS just hit bookshelves. Cue the fanboys and fangirls.
Originally published on LitHub.com, along with the tributes of six other writers and editors.
I’m an AP guy.
I learned stylebooks while editing newspapers, so the Associated Press style standards made sense. Newspapers use AP style because it’s crafted for the way that people read newspapers: quickly, over breakfast, on the bus, on the go. Give them as few reasons to pause reading — as few characters to get tripped up on — as possible.
Serial commas? Seriously frowned upon. If readers hit more commas than they need to, they’re more likely to pause reading, get distracted by a gust of wind or a baby squirrel, and then forget to ever start again. Eventually they read less, grow illiterate, drop out of school, become degenerate, and show up at your house to rob and kill you. All because you wanted a second comma in “red, white, and blue.” How un-American.
Numbers? AP uses numerals for everything larger than nine. If you’re trying to count ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall — rather than 99 — you’ll get drunk on all the extra characters, and by the time you hit the seventies, you’re barely able to count, much less punctuate.
En dashes? They’re dead to any AP stylist. Just how many horizontal lines do you need?
AP style is crisp, quick, efficient — ruthlessly engineered for a world that thrives on efficiency.
That’s why The Chicago Manual of Style feels so … lazy.
Adding in serial commas? Spelling out numbers all the way through one hundred? Distinguishing among em dashes, en dashes, and hyphens? Each one slows you down.
Asking readers to actually take their time?
It’s like Chicago wants readers to luxuriate.
In.
The.
Pauses.
The AP editor has reams of copy to get through before the presses start. Put a skinny little hyphen between those date ranges and page ranges and call it a night.
The Chicago editor has all the time in the world to convert those hyphens to en dashes. Unencumbered by daily deadlines, that editor can breathe as easy as the numbers on either side do with the extra room that the en dash grants them.
It’s not just about the editors. With Chicago style, readers also feel that airiness and relief. They relax. They absorb. They process.
They enjoy.
Who’s got time for all that?
At Literary Hub, read CMOS tributes from Benjamin Dreyer, David Shields, Barbara Clark, Mark Allen, Ellen Jovin and Jack Lynch.
We just finished the first weekend of performances of The Angry Grammarian: A New Musical, and audiences have been ecstatic. Just five performances left, and tickets are going quickly.
Thursday, September 26, 7:30 pm
Friday, September 27, 8 pm
Saturday, September 28, 2 pm (matinee)
Saturday, September 28, 8 pm
Sunday, September 29, 2 pm (closing matinee)
Buy tickets here while you can!
Performances at Arden Theatre, 40 N. Second St., Philadelphia, PA 19106