Sunday, June 22, 2014

We can have our own stylebook?




When Steve presented the idea of having a stylebook for school publications, it was like the clouds parted and a ray of light was shining down illuminating the way to eliminate one of my pet peeves at work.

I work at Arvada West, or A-West, or AWest, or Awest, or awest, or even aWest. Creating consistency in how we abbreviate our school's name across publications and school documents would certainly reduce the number of conversations and headaches about how to write our school's name!

Annie Gorenstein
Arvada West High School
Arvada, Colorado

7 comments:

  1. I always aim for the clouds-parting effect, so mission accomplished. I also find that having your own stylebook reinforces the importance of consistency and makes AP style more approachable.

    Steve Elliott
    Arizona State University
    Phoenix

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh, and your video's permissions are set to private so I can't see how great I look.

    Steve Elliott
    Arizona State University
    Phoenix

    ReplyDelete
  3. My school needs to make a decision about how we publish our name. It drives me crazy. Everyone uses whatever they like.
    1.School Without Walls @ Francis Stevens
    2.School Without Walls At Francis Stevens
    3. School Without Walls at Francis- Stevens
    4. School Without Walls At Francis -Stevens
    5. School Without Walls Francis Stevens
    HELP!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I was thinking the same thing. My college newspaper did that, but it was already made when I got there. I am going to go send out my students to figure out preferred names and titles for teachers at our school. I think this will be good practice. I also want to figure out second references. My school's full name is Innovations Early College High School, but I think that full name should only be used for the first reference.

    Dana Savage
    Innovations High School
    Salt Lake City

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  5. I'm glad you posted this. We don't actually have a publication yet, so I'm scrambling as I attempt to make a list of all our considerations for this fall. This will definitely be on my list! I can already see my kids referring to our school in 13 different ways within the same article.

    Lisa Biber
    Brodhead High School
    Brodhead, Wis.

    ReplyDelete
  6. This is a really good point. My students complain a lot about having to look up AP style. What I will do is give them an article where there are five different versions of a word/name/title. It really annoys them that there isn't consistency. That's when I say, "See? We need AP style."

    Bobby Oliver
    San Pasqual High School
    San Diego, California

    ReplyDelete
  7. Great idea, Bobby. Isn't it fun sometimes to coerce our students with a little "I told you so"?
    Angela Hobart
    Starkville High School

    ReplyDelete