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I’ve noticed a lot of columnists and reporters using a variation of this style in their shirttails when they note their Twitter address: Contact him @reporter. The @ symbol doesn’t mean “at” in this instance, as it’s a part of the Twitter nomenclature. You need to include the “at” before the name.
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It’s been awhile since I gave an Ask the Editor update. Here are some pointers:
- AP now uses drive-thru instead of drive-through. The hyphen is used when the word is a noun and when it’s an adjective. They made the change last year.
- Sleep-away camp is just so.
- If you start a sentence with the phrase 50-50, spell out both numerals: Fifty-fifty.
- This rule is falling by the wayside these days, but you need to use a comma after hi or hello when addressing someone: Hi, Jim.
- AP Style doesn’t use the serial comma (aka Oxford comma), but they’re flexible on the issue to some degree. As they say, “Commas in a series are for clarity and prevention of ambiguities. In a simple series, a comma before the last item isn't essential for clarity, so AP Style doesn't use a comma in that instance. In series with more complexity, a comma may be needed for clarity, so AP Style allows a comma before the last item in such cases.”
