The Write Blog

Last week, we kicked off a mini-series of AP Stylebook-themed blog posts. This week, we’re sharing a few more gems of wisdom from The AP Stylebook Online.

Q: What’s the rule for capitalizing a person’s title?
A: It’s complicated, but here are the basics: AP defines a formal title as “one that denotes a scope of authority, professional activity or academic activity.” When using a formal title, you should capitalize the title if it appears directly before a person’s name. So, you’d write “President Barack Obama” or “Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.”

However:

When you set the person’s name off with commas, you don’t capitalize a formal title – even if the title is before the person’s name. So, you might say, “The hotel’s general manager, John Smith, donated to the cause.” Or “The vice president, Joe Biden, appeared at the event.”
When using a title alone (without a person’s name), you don’t capitalize. So, you’d write “the president gave a speech” or “the congresswoman visited her hometown.”

And, don’t confuse a job title or line of work with a formal title. So, you wouldn’t capitalize: teacher, politician, editor, technician, astronaut – no matter where they appear in the sentence.

Whew! Confused yet? AP notes that, when in doubt about how to capitalize, the best solution is to rewrite the sentence so that the person’s name is set off in commas. For more specific details, check out the whole AP entry on titles.

Continue reading AP Style FAQs: Part 2

Since the very beginning of blogging (I’m talking Livejournal and DiaryLand days), writers have been using the web to showcase their talent and get their names out into the world. Then came socialnetworking: The now-obsolete Makeout Club and Friendster. Myspace. And the most popular kid on the block, Facebook.

Now entrepreneurs are extending social networks to writers. Take talentville.com, which debuted a few weeks ago. Talentville is the brainchild of Ben Cahan (who was also a developer for FinalDraft, the Hollywood-approved standard screenwriting software), and it combines two not-so-new ideas: writers and social networking.

The website is billed as “The online city for creative minds” – and while the home page says that screenwriters, novelists, playwrights, and storytellers all have a space at Talentville, I’m guessing that the site is optimized mainly for screenwriters.

But the site itself looks pretty cool: Users start a profile for themselves, then they upload their work into forums for others to review. Users can browse a library of user-generated content, network with other writers, and (per the site’s “About” page) maybe even get your screenplay scouted by an agent or industry professional.

Quick note: Talentville makes sure that writers’ intellectual property is protected through encryption, viewing and printing controls, and an audit trail of who has read your work (sigh of relief).

While Talentville is new and still building its member base (some of the website’s capabilities still aren’t up and running yet), it seems to have a lot of potential, especially for newbie writers: Think of it as a resource for feedback and peer reviews – globally.

Does “city-wide” need a hyphen? If you’re writing about a sculpture, should you italicize the title, or put it in quotation marks?

The truth is, there’s no right answer. In most cases, style choices like this can vary from client to client. But what do you do when your client has no clear preference? Or when the graphic designer and the proofreader clash on where (and when) to use a hyphen?

You refer to The AP Stylebook Online. It’s a great resource for making style choices (and, sometimes, settling disagreements).

One note before you read: The AP Stylebook is a guide, not a set of laws. While we often use AP style (it’s sort of the standard and most people are familiar with it), it’s not the only style guide out there. In some cases, you or your client may decide to make your own rule or create an in-house style guide that picks and chooses which AP rules to follow. That’s okay, too.

Continue reading AP Style FAQs: Part 1

Good writers are generally voracious readers (feel free to challenge me on that claim if you want!). For a writer, reading is just like warming up and stretching your brain before you sprint into a new project.

Here’s my favorite way to get a little reading time in throughout the day (which also doubles as a convenient 5-minute afternoon break): Daily Lit. With Daily Lit, you can Continue reading Daily Lit-erary Therapy in Your Inbox

So, Gamefly.com has been running this ad lately. Check it out:

People buy bad video games. They freak out, realizing that they’ve purchased bad video games. They continue to freak out, ostensibly because they’re stuck with their bad video games (and out the 50 to 60 bucks they paid for them).

The ad ends with a line that says something like, “Never buy bad games again.”

So, the message is . . . we should rent bad games? The ability to rent dozens of bad games per month, delivered straight to your mailbox is somehow better than buying one bad game? There’s no need to freak out – you don’t have to keep this bad game? You can send it back, and in a few days, you’ll get another bad game (but at least you’re not stuck with it)?

Continue reading Positive vs. Negative Marketing . . . and Gamefly’s “Bad Game” TV Spot