style questions

[dog eat dog world]

These vary from paper to paper

Coach or head coach?
Do you capitalize Coach as in Dallas Coach Jason Garrett? The DMN used to do this.
a 2-yard gain and the same for any number below 10?

 

[boundforboston]

Coach unless you mention assistants. Don't capitalize. Correct.

 

[jr/shotglass]

2-yard gain. Same for any number below 10.

 

[HejiraHenry]

I regard coach and head coach as interchangeable. We tend to use the former.

We do not cap the C in coach. No need.

2-yard gain.

 

[dog eat dog world]

why the move to exclusive numerals even below 10? like he had six first-half points.

 

[joe king]

These vary from paper to paper

Coach or head coach?
Do you capitalize Coach as in Dallas Coach Jason Garrett? The DMN used to do this.
a 2-yard gain and the same for any number below 10?

Yardage in football is ALWAYS a numeral, regardless of the circumstance. Well, I guess if someone started a sentence, "Six yards away from the goal line..." or something like that, it would be an exception. Other than that, yardage is never spelled out -- 2-yard gain, 5-yard line, ran for 6 yards on the play, etc.

 

[imjustagirl]

coach instead of head coach.
Only cap coach if it's used as a sub for his name. "I do whatever Coach tells me to do," Joey Linebacker said.
2-yard gain, 2-yard line, but he ran for two yards.

 

[joe king]

why the move to exclusive numerals even below 10? like he had six first-half points.

It's AP style.

Use figures for yardages, scores, statistics, clock time, schedules:
1-yard line,
fourth-and-1 situation
4 seconds before halftime
8 for 18 for 200 yards and a touchdown.
gained 3 yards, not three yards
third-and-4, second-and-10, etc.
Week 4, Week 11, Game 12.
2-point conversion
8½ sacks, not 8.5 sacks

 

[Songbird]

Sports is numbers.

He carried the ball 3 times for 7 yards.

She scored 7 points and grabbed 4 rebounds.

He allowed 4 runs on 3 hits.

 

[jr/shotglass]

Sports is numbers.

He carried the ball 3 times for 7 yards.

She scored 7 points and grabbed 4 rebounds.

He allowed 4 runs on 3 hits.

It may be numbers, but most of that is incorrect, AP style-wise.

 

[Songbird]

Stick to AP style when it comes to grammar or punctuation or whatnot.

AP needs to change its sports style yesterday. (Yes, its rules are its rules as we know them. Just sayin'.)

 

[Frank_Ridgeway]

These vary from paper to paper

True, and as long as I know my paper's style, I don't care beyond that.

I wrote a stylebook the first time I was a slot 31 years ago, and what i didn't know could have filled a book. I try to remember that every time I have to read someone else's stylebook. The best one I've had to use said in the preface something like, "We understand that some of these decisions leave room for disagreement, but the purpose of this book is not to cause arguments but to settle them." They understood style is often arbitrary.

Personal preference, though, is "coach" for the same reason that I wouldn't capitalize gym teacher. I like my paper's style on saying "John Doe, a physician," rather than Dr. John Doe. They're just people, not a higher life form.

 

[dog eat dog world]

I was just curious as to why there was such a wide range between papers. My guess on this is because the sports section of the stylebook is pretty lame.

 

[Frank_Ridgeway]

I was just curious as to why there was such a wide range between papers. My guess on this is because the sports section of the stylebook is pretty lame.

I think an honest answer is the newspaper's tradition, in some cases handed down caveman-style rather than in writing, and sometimes for reasons long forgotten. And then it becomes a question of whether it's easier to ask new people to learn the newspaper's quirks or ask experienced people to unlearn them, and usually it's going to be the former. I can't say I've worked anywhere that followed AP style to the letter, without exceptions.

 

[jr/shotglass]

True. We're successfully overriding "2 for 5" now, inserting the hyphens like it should be.

 

[Versatile]

I'm totally going to end up coming back here to write a 500-word screed about this, but I think most newspapers at this point use enough AP copy that it's become a worthless pain in the ass not to follow their style. As much as I prefer "5-for-5" to "5 for 5," I spend way too much time fixing those types of style issues in AP stories these days. That said, the obvious secondary issue is that the AP sports copy desk has gone to crap. I don't know what their workflow is, exactly, but I understand that every writer is required to do a desk shift. Writers are not copy editors and copy editors are not writers. These are unique skill sets. Some possess both, but most don't. I'm not half as good a writer as I am an editor, which is why I mostly stick to editing. But the AP, well, you used to be able to count on them to get the facts right, spell the names right and get their own damn style right. No more.

 

[Songbird]

I detest 5-for-5. Why the hyphens? More often than not, writers in a hurry, and these days because of horrid deadlines writers who are writing like it's the 100-meter dash will hit the = instead of - and so it reads "John Smith went 5-for=5 ... " and that's just one more thing a rushed copy editor (if there's even a copy editor) might miss, and it looks bad in print.

John Smith went 5 for 5 and grabbed 8 rebounds in 4 minutes off the bench ...

That is the perfect combination of writing and sports. No hyphens, no unneeded punctuation. Keep it simple.

Elliott Sadler raced for the first time in 3 years and led the first 7 laps before his engine fell onto the track and caused a 4-car wreck.

Numbers. Numbers. Numbers.

 

[BillyT]

There's a wide range between papers, because come papaers ignore AP style, which is designed to avoid questions like this.

 

[da man]

I detest 5-for-5. Why the hyphens? More often than not, writers in a hurry, and these days because of horrid deadlines writers who are writing like it's the 100-meter dash will hit the = instead of - and so it reads "John Smith went 5-for=5 ... " and that's just one more thing a rushed copy editor (if there's even a copy editor) might miss, and it looks bad in print.

John Smith went 5 for 5 and grabbed 8 rebounds in 4 minutes off the bench ...

That is the perfect combination of writing and sports. No hyphens, no unneeded punctuation. Keep it simple.

Elliott Sadler raced for the first time in 3 years and led the first 7 laps before his engine fell onto the track and caused a 4-car wreck.

Numbers. Numbers. Numbers.

Never mind the style. Coach should be fired for not playing that Smith guy more than four minutes.

 

[jr/shotglass]

I'm totally going to end up coming back here to write a 500-word screed about this, but I think most newspapers at this point use enough AP copy that it's become a worthless pain in the ass not to follow their style. As much as I prefer "5-for-5" to "5 for 5," I spend way too much time fixing those types of style issues in AP stories these days. That said, the obvious secondary issue is that the AP sports copy desk has gone to crap. I don't know what their workflow is, exactly, but I understand that every writer is required to do a desk shift. Writers are not copy editors and copy editors are not writers. These are unique skill sets. Some possess both, but most don't. I'm not half as good a writer as I am an editor, which is why I mostly stick to editing. But the AP, well, you used to be able to count on them to get the facts right, spell the names right and get their own damn style right. No more.

That's a damn good point. At some point, you're weighing how much trouble the changes are against how badly you want to establish your style.

But here's another thing where we decided it's worth getting everybody on board with. It's not really style, but AP insisting on inserting its "AP Pro32" rankings into all NFL stories. We won't stand for them pushing it on us. Slice 'em every time.