AP Stylebook

11/28/2025

Black Friday is the Friday after Thanksgiving, when U.S. retail stores traditionally launch the start of Christmas shopping.

11/27/2025

Foul means offensive, out of line. A fowl is a bird, especially the larger domestic birds used as food: chickens, ducks, turkeys.

11/26/2025

Several years ago, the Stylebook advised that you heat your oven, because "preheat" is redundant.
That might be true linguistically, but we heard you. Common usage in cookbooks calls for preheating.
Our guidance now says preheat is acceptable to refer to heating an oven to a specific temperature before cooking.

11/25/2025

If you're making a holiday wish list, let your parents or your bestie know that you'd love a subscription to Stylebook Online. Maybe you'd rather have a registration to an AP Stylebook Workshop. Or both!

The AP Stylebook 2 print edition, web-based access and style-checking software.

11/24/2025

The traditional meaning of "hopefully" is in a hopeful manner. Also acceptable is the modern usage: it's hoped, we hope.

A new survey from the American Communities Project shows that pessimism about the country’s future has risen in cities since last year, but rural America is more optimistic about what’s ahead for the…

11/24/2025

Do you work with a small team?
We recently added a five-user site license for AP Stylebook Online for groups like yours.

Previously, you had to buy 10 seats to get features like a centralized house style guide and a dashboard where you can easily add and remove users. Now smaller groups get the convenience and the preferential pricing of site licenses, too.

AP Stylebook Online is a searchable, customizable guide for writers and editors that is updated throughout the year. Your subscription includes the popular Ask the Editor feature, where you can ask your own questions and search thousands of past answers, and Topical Guides, offering guidance to help...

11/21/2025

A Stylebook Online subscriber asked whether the preferred term is orca or killer whale.
Ask the Editor responded that the terms are used interchangeably.
No matter what you call them, these images of orcas hunting a seal that survived only by clambering onto a photographer's boat are dramatic.
https://buff.ly/SrsnVbV

11/20/2025

If you're trying to train your favorite AI tool to proof for AP style, keep in mind there are thousands of entries in the Stylebook, many with multiple considerations within the entry.
Save yourself the headaches and subscribe to AP StyleGuard Pro. Our technology partners at Tansa have decades of experience creating proofing tools, and they get updates every time we add or change guidance.
Let them do the hard work so you can focus on your writing and editing.

Whether you are new to AP style or you want help keeping up with changing guidance, let our style-checking tools help you write and edit. Get style-checking help for Microsoft Word, Outlook and PowerPoint, or today’s most popular web browsers, including in Google Docs. Our all-new interface review...

11/20/2025

Our guidance on numbers says that in sequential designations, generally use figures, but spell out ordinal numbers ninth and under.
Capitalize the first letter for a single designation: Act 3, Day 1, Exit 2, Game 3, Phase 1, Room 6, Size 12, Stage 3, Category 4, Type 2.
Use lowercase for plurals: sizes 6 and 8, exits 4 and 5, acts 1 and 2, verses 2 and 9.
It’s Verse 1 but the first verse; Game 4 but the fourth game.

Lionsgate’s “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” pulled in $21.3 million, while Paramount’s “The Running Man” made $17 million, according to studio estimates.

11/19/2025

Always use figures for vote totals.
Spell out below 10 in other phrases related to voting: by a five-vote majority, with three abstentions, four votes short of the necessary two-thirds majority.
For results that involve fewer than 1,000 votes on each side, use these forms: The House voted 222-209, a 222-209 vote.

President Donald Trump has signed a government funding bill that ends a record 43-day shutdown. The disruption caused financial stress for federal workers who went without paychecks, stranded scores…

11/19/2025

Merriam-Webster has published a new edition of its Collegiate Dictionary.
It weighs in at almost five pounds – but the lightweight way to get all those new and updated entries is to subscribe to AP Stylebook Online with the Merriam-Webster add-on.
You won't get the cool thumb notches, but you can get guidance from the Stylebook and Merriam-Webster in one convenient search.

AP Stylebook Online is a searchable, customizable guide for writers and editors that is updated throughout the year. Your subscription includes the popular Ask the Editor feature, where you can ask your own questions and search thousands of past answers, and Topical Guides, offering guidance to help...

11/18/2025

In general, AP style does not use courtesy titles such as Mr., Mrs. or Ms., except in direct quotations.