>From page C1 of The Washington Post, Friday, July 29, 2011. I added a comment. If anyone writes to him it would be good for the writing to be thoughtful and considered rather than an attack.
Carleton http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/david-minthorn-is-the-grammar- expert-for-the-associated-press/2011/07/25/gIQAGBLwfI_story.html By Paul Farhi, Published: July 28 In its modern, digital forms, writing has become something like an untended garden. It's overgrown with text-speak and crawling with invasive species like tweets and dashed-off e-mails. OMG, it's a mess. So think of David Minthorn as a linguistic gardener, doggedly cultivating this weedy patch in the hope of restoring some order and maybe coaxing something beautiful out of it. Minthorn's mission is the maintenance of English grammar, the policing of punctuation and the enforcement of a consistent written style for one of the world's largest news organizations. As the Associated Press's deputy standards editor, he's the news wire's word nerd, the go-to guy for settling all manner of niggling usage questions. Is it "e-mail" or "email"? "Smart phone" or "smartphone"? "Tea Party" or "tea party"? According to Dave Minthorn, it should be the latter in each case. His distilled wisdom is the AP Stylebook, the bible for correspondents and editors and a best-selling volume in its own right for the past three decades. Minthorn and two colleagues, Darrell Christian and Sally Jacobsen, are the Stylebook's editors. They spend all year arguing about what to include, updating the book to take account of new words and phrases such as "geotagging," "unfollow," and "Internet-connected TV." For the past four years, Minthorn has also been the author of AP's "Ask the Editor" feature, in which perplexed writers from all walks of life (and all corners of the globe) seek his counsel on such pressing matters as the placement of commas and the appropriate use of an apostrophe. (click the link for the rest of the story)
