AP Stylebook

11/07/2025

Stories about floods usually tell how high the water is and where it is expected to crest. Such a story should also, for comparison, list flood stage and how high the water is above, or below, flood stage.
Wrong: The river is expected to crest at 39 feet.
Right: The river is expected to crest at 39 feet, 12 feet above flood stage.

10/07/2025

Our new and improved AP StyleGuard Pro tools proof the text you write and edit to help you follow the AP Stylebook and our primary dictionary, Merriam-Webster.
Add in your own custom entries and it can check to make sure you're following those rules, too.
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10/07/2025

Whether you're watching some of the world's best tennis players at Wimbledon or you're on the courts yourself this summer, we are serving up some key tennis terms in AP style.
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09/07/2025

An acronym is a word formed from the first letter or letters of a series of words. For example, laser comes from light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.
ICE is an acronym for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

08/07/2025

Write Your Way to Success, AP's four-part online course, starts in less than a month.
But don't delay registering: Today is the deadline to get the early-bird discount. Sign up now to get the best price we'll offer for this engaging class.
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The AP Stylebook print edition, web-based access and style-checking software.

08/07/2025

A flash flood is a sudden, violent flood. It typically occurs after a heavy rain or the melting of a heavy snow.
A flash flood warning warns that flash flooding is imminent or in progress or is highly likely, while a flash flood watch alerts the public that conditions are favorable for flash flooding.
More guidance like this is available in the Stylebook's entry on weather terms.

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Intense rainstorms are becoming more frequent in most of the U.S. — though experts say where they occur and whether they cause catastrophic flooding is largely a matter of chance.

07/07/2025

We just opened registration for two all-new AP Stylebook Workshops, one focusing on mechanics and the other on the big-picture issues of refining your content.

Sign up now for our limited-time offer: You can take both workshops for just $350. This price won't last so get your seats now and mark your calendar to join us in October.
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04/07/2025

Lowercase the phrase the national anthem but the formal name of the United States’ national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner," is capitalized and in quotation marks.

03/07/2025

If you're packing up the car for a three-day weekend, do it in style.

No hyphen in the noun: We are taking a road trip in July.
Hyphenate as a compound modifier: We are making our road-trip plans.
Also hyphenate as a verb: We will go road-tripping to six states.

Stylebook Online subscribers can find this and other terms on our summer travel Topical Guide, in our archives from 2021:

03/07/2025

Fourth of July, July Fourth and Independence Day are all acceptable for the upcoming holiday.

If you're already thinking about your long weekend plans for 2026 or 2027, the federal legal holiday is observed on Friday if July 4 falls on a Saturday, on Monday if it falls on a Sunday.

02/07/2025

In AP style, health care is two words.

Also, use figures with million, billion or trillion in all except casual uses: I'd like to make a billion dollars. But: The nation has 1 million citizens. I need $7 billion. The government ran a deficit of more than $1 trillion.

State and federal prosecutors have charged more than 320 people in the largest coordinated takedown of health care fraud schemes in Justice Department history that uncovered nearly $15 billion in…

30/06/2025

We don't hyphenate email or esports, but we do use a hyphen with other e- terms: e-book, e-reader, e-commerce.
So when you sign up for the AP Stylebook e-newsletter, that's with a hyphen.

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