Adventures in AP Style

Here is a common experience we have as English teachers: you meet someone new and start going through the basics, sharing names, spousal information, hometowns, and the like.

"What do you do?" your new friend asks.

"I teach high school English," you reply.

"Oh, I better watch my language around you!" laughs your now questionable new friend.

Ha.

I have never corrected my family or friends unless they've asked me to. Though I've been skilled with our wonderful language from a young age, I learned very quickly that people do not like to be corrected. Instead, I grit my teeth and fume in silence. The last time I vocalized an issue was last summer at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. I noticed some inconsistent capitalization on a sign explaining something about diamonds or space (obviously I was more distracted by the error than the content itself), and I immediately took a picture and pointed out the error to my husband.

"Who cares?" he snorted, moving on to the next exhibit.

"But this is the Smithsonian," I insisted, pointing emphatically at the sign again. "They should get this kind of stuff right!"

The offending Smithsonian sign, which I took a poor photo of in my haste.

"No one notices but you," he quipped over his shoulder.

Anyway, this week has been fun for me because, all joking about the Oxford comma aside, I've enjoyed griping about the ignorance the general population demonstrates in regards to spelling and usage. After our AP Style session last week, it felt like I was suddenly noticing errors everywhere. But, I finally have a group of people to share my annoyance with!

Yesterday, several of us went to the Grand Canyon (which was breathtakingly awesome, by the way). We had a blast getting to know each other, but we also had fun pointing out spelling and grammar inconsistencies all over the place. It seemed like the more we looked, the more we discovered. Here are a couple examples from yesterday (which I also posted on Facebook):

It's so Required, we had to capitalize it. Also, thank-you.

I can not believe people still don't know cannot is one word. And why is firewood randomly italicized? Is it a musical title? Or a book title? Oh, I bet it's a movie. They don't want people purchasing it because it's been inspiring naughty teenagers everywhere to start fires in Grand Canyon National Park.

 It's been an absolute pleasure having a group of teachers to commiserate with all week. I know how difficult teaching grammar can be, and I commend those of you who, like me, keep trying anyway. Let's keep modeling consistency and correctness in an ever-careless world!

Lisa Biber
Brodhead High School
Brodhead, Wis.