Notes From The AP’s Deputy Standards Editor

The Washington Post has a great profile of David Minthorn, the Associated Press’ Deputy Standards Editor this morning. Minthorn is the man responsible for policing the grammar used by the AP, and because of that, he’s answered just about every question concerning the English language there is.

The most common question he’s answered is about when to use quotes and when to italicize (the AP never italicizes, but that’s due to formatting issues more than anything else), but here’s a few other interesting items from the Minthorn piece:

• It’s “bed-and-breakfast”
• There was a lot of arguing when the AP switched from “e-mail” to “email”
• The plural of “meatloaf” is “meatloaves.” No word on if Meat Loaf refers to his children this way or not.

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