Get over it copy editors

[Buck]

Copy editors?
Paginators, and they don’t read the copy.
Just cut from the bottom until it fits.

 

[HanSenSE]

Once upon a time, I would die on the hills that are over/more than, RBI/RBIs and a few others. Not as much now.

But you can rip the keyboard out of my cold, dead hands before I leave a wrong-facing apostrophe.

I will fight until the last of the forces calling them "donuts" instead of doughnuts are vanquished.

 

[The Big Ragu]

Um, no.

The stylebook is a guide, not the bible. It has so many inconsistencies that while it can be taken seriously, it's not the be-all, end-all its editors proclaim it to be. Plus, AP's own writers and editors don't even follow it religiously.

I have never been a newspaper person, but I have produced a lot of publications over the years, many of which used modified versions of AP Style as their guide. Deferring to the stylebook for all the weird little things, with our own stylesheet for things that come up often because of the nature of the publication. I am not a copy editor. I would suck at it beyond belief, putting out things filled with errors and inconsistencies, and even grammatical and spelling errors, if copy editing was ever left to me. Which is why I have a healthy respect for people who do that work. But as someone who has had final say on what style to follow when developing publications over the years, the bottom line has never been about following AP Style like it is some sort of religion. It's about being consistent. Whatever style we'd come up with, the important thing was to to try hard to be constant about doing things the same way, because it makes for more professional-looking work.