One Day in the Near Future

President-elect Barack Obama held his first press conference today on the economy. It was actually a little weird to watch him acting so ... presidential. I kept on expecting people to start chanting "Fired up, Ready to Go!" Something different, but in a good way.

In any case, my dear Aunt Jini sent me a chain-mail today. While, as some might know, this is not particularly newsworthy it did seem timely and topical, and I thought that I would like to share:

One sunny day in January, 2009 an old man approached the White House from across Pennsylvania Avenue, where he'd been sitting on a park bench. He spoke to the U.S. Marine standing guard and said, "I would like to go in and meet with President Bush." The Marine looked at the man and said, "Sir, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here." The old man said, "Okay", and walked away.

The following day, the same man approached the White House and said to the same Marine, "I would like to go in and meet with President Bush." The Marine again told the man, "Sir, as I said yesterday, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here." The man thanked him and, again, just walked away.

The third day, the same man approached the White House and spoke to the very same U.S. Marine, saying "I would like to go in and meet with President Bush." The Marine, understandably agitated at this point, looked at the man and said, "Sir, this is the third day in a row you have been here asking to speak to Mr. Bush. I've told you already that Mr. Bush is no longer the president and no longer resides here. Don't you understand?"

The old man looked at the Marine and said, "Oh, I understand. I just love hearing it."

Journal Entry X

Journal Entry 10: AP Style

I finally got a copy of the AP stylebook, and I came home only to realize that I did indeed have an earlier version of the same. C’est la vie. The new version is still an excellent thing to have, and it holds a wealth of information in it about writing and grammar. In fact, when a friend asked me about getting into journalism I recommended her a copy of Zinsser’s On Writing Well as well as the AP stylebook. The way I see it, if you have the two of those there isn’t much you can’t learn.

I like AP style a lot, though it might seem like a pain in the ass to others. Perhaps it is a latent degree of OCD coming out of me, but I like how well ordered it is. There is a common set of guidelines that are adhered to when creating the governing rules, which means that I only have to understand those guidelines to feel like I understand the style. I might not know the exact rules governing a specific word, but I’ll know enough to be able to check anything that could be suspect and then receive a definitive answer. One of my biggest problems with MLA style is that it attempts to create this kind of system, but fails. This leaves you knowing that MLA has an arbitrary style that it wants you to follow, but it doesn’t cover anything comprehensively, leaving you to come up with your own subjective answer.

AP style still has faults, however. It could do well to update for more regularly, the e-mail/email conundrum is perhaps the most glaring error of this kind. On this issue the AP guide is simply out of date. Then there are the agency’s traditions that are making the style more difficult to use. Italics would make the entire industry more readable, but the editors are resisting change due to heritage. This needs to change just as black and white photographs gave way to color.