Typo in the 2006 AP Stylebook?

Please turn to page 289, left column where the sample football agate box is shown.

In score by quarters, there is now an underscore _ between the team and player like this "Phi_Smith 6 pass from McNabb..."

In the past, there was a long dash — in that spot "Phi — Smith 6 pass from McNabb ..."

Is that just a typo or is the AP changing that for some odd reason?

 

Makes no sense to me any way else. Gotta be a typo.

 

there's no change in style. merely a matter of the differing keyboards used to produce the sample. the earlier version was from the days of atex which presented the long dash as you saw it. since moving to a pc-type keyboard (a long time ago), the long dash is now presented as an underscore to ap computers. many samples in the stylebook were updated to reflect content changes over the past 20 years or so and the keyboard differences came along with them.

 

so if ap actually did change its style in that manner, would you actually follow it?

 

Nope.

I was just curious if I was going to be changing NFL and NCAA boxes from AP back to the old style, if the switch had been made.

 

Must have been the same copy editors who "edit" AP cutlines.

 

If AP now uses PC keyboards, why do I still have to find and replace "-3" to "/3" on baseball boxes so I can fix fractions?

 

Because some newspapers don't have the coding to do thirds.