Stylebook lacks style

For many years the Associated Press has printed an annual revision of the legendary AP Stylebook, which is something of a bible for journalists. It provides guidance on such things as spelling, punctuation and capitalization.

The newspaper where I worked rarely purchased new stylebooks for staff members, but that didn't seem to matter because style didn't change that much from one year to another. If there was a big change, we were sent memos.

At some point the stylebook went online, and my newspaper stopped purchasing paper stylebooks altogether, but I rarely, if ever, consulted the online version. I preferred the old, now-outdated book, which I still kept nearby.

One problem with an online stylebook, like an online dictionary, is that it is too easy to change. Instead of making revisions every year, the AP can revise it at whim, every day if they choose. The AP Stylebook may be the bible for journalists, but do you really want a Bible in which the 10 Commandments change every time you read them?

And that brings us to the recent controversy over the AP advising journalists to avoid using the word the, except apparently when referring to the AP. Specifically the AP now advises journalists to avoid lumping people together with phrases like "the poor," "the disabled," and "the mentally ill," as if this were somehow dehumanizing.

More dehumanizing, it seems to me, are the phrases the AP recommends to replace them, such as "people with mental illnesses." For people with mental illnesses, the change makes no difference, except perhaps among the ultra-sensitive politicized few. The wordy favored phrases, on the other hand, are dehumanizing to those advised — thankfully still not required — to use them and to those, all the rest of us, who must read them and hear them.

Human language should be direct and understandable. Convoluted euphemisms, such as those now so popular with government bureaucrats and academia, seem more intended to obscure meaning and confuse the public, while pacifying a few complainants, at least for a time.

In its original revision the AP included "the French" as an example of a usage to be avoided. This example was quickly dropped from the online stylebook after much ridicule, much of it coming from "the French." Considering how quickly that particular change was made, maybe an online stylebook isn't all bad.