I am so happy I learned real journalism at my father’s knee as a child and honed it over the years, always taking advantage of the AP Stylebook for proper terms and usage, And because of how much I learned and how well it aided me in being successful, I’m even more delighted that in writing my own blog, I do not have to adhere to today’s AP Stylebook. Nor do I have to use new made-up words to draft my stories.
Some things have not changed. For instance, I always knew if I was writing about Queen Elizabeth, it was a capital Q, but not so if I were referring simply to the queen. The same with any of the other royals, be they king, prince, duke or whatever. Came in handy at the time of the queen’s death.
But now, if I were following AP Style, I cannot say not say pro-choice or pro-life or pro-abortion; I’m expected to say abortion rights or anti-abortion. Don’t quite understand why it’s ok to say anti-abortion, but not pro-life, but that’s what AP Style tells me.
Fortunately, AP still allows me to write ‘pregnant women” But, they tell me, if I REALLY want to be inclusive, then I should use the term “pregnant people.” That would ensure I’m covering all women, even those who may be pregnant but don’t identify as women…that means transgender men and nonbinary people, you understand.
It doesn’t matter that my heart breaks every time I see photos of dozens of illegal immigrants crashing our Texas borders in order to get here…AP says I can’t call them illegal aliens or unauthorized immigrants, or refer to them as illegal, or unauthorized. I should just call all these folks breaking our laws migrants or immigrants…even though they are not.
I’m happy AP thinks it’s ok to call Fentanyl a drug, the street drug that’s ten times more powerful than heroin and the leading drug of overdose deaths in the country. But that’s the same name I use for all prescriptions doctors write for legal purchases. I’m pretty sure they’re still allowing me to refer to Fentanyl as an illegal drug, though, at least they haven’t said I can’t.
I can still call a gun a gun, but I can’t call any guns assault rifles or assault weapons, even they look like assault weapons. I should be more specific…like
Identifying the function of a say, rifle, and identify it as semi-automatic rifle or automatic rifle. But of course to do that, I have to know how many bullets are fired, and if there’s an auto reload so it just keeps on firing when the trigger is depressed. When somebody does this a lot, I should call it a shooting rampage, and not say somebody went on a shooting spree. Kind of sounds like he went on a shopping spree or something fun like that.
When it comes to sex and gender I really get confused. For the last five years, the AP Stylebook has told me there’s such a thing as “cisgender “, which means the people whose genders match their sexual organs. I should use intersex for those whose external sexual organs differ from whom they think or feel they are. That’s because AP tells me gender refers to a person’s social identity, and is entirely different from sex, which just means the biological characteristics. So, to keep everyone happy, I really should never say both or either sex, or heavens, the opposite sex, since they all infer there are only two sexes or genders, I’m not sure which.
And to be really correct, I should simply say they. But not They is, which is what I would have used if I thought sex or gender was singular and that would make the pronoun ‘they’ singular. Nope, I still should say they are, but I haven’t figured out why. What happened to the days of subject and predicate agreeing? AP Style suggests use the print the name, rather than the pronoun if that’s important to you…or reword the sentence to avoid a pronoun altogether.
All of this is necessary, you understand, because in the 21st century, more young people are identifying themselves as non-conforming with what we all thought were two genders, so there is therefore a new need to change the language.
APSTYLE tackles the question head-on on whether MS, Mr., Ms, Mrs. or something else is the best courtesy title to use in writing. Their answer? In most cases, avoid any courtesy title at all. Change the sentence around so you don’t need a pronoun.
So Muriel the first assault weapons came out during WW1. The machine gun was a fully auto firing weapon which would fire continuously as long as the trigger was held down until the ammo ran out. A semi auto long gun or rifle will only fire once at each trigger pull. Many semi auto long guns don’t look anything like the so called assault weapons but still function the same way. Since 1934 no civilian could own any full auto military weapon. The full auto Thompson submachine gun did that. There are 19 million registered so called assault rifles in the Us that have killed less people than Ted Kennedy’s car.
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