I need to add one more to the final paragraph: *They refuse to learn (and perhaps, simply don't give a damn) Some members of our board have been writing to them pointing out errors for at least 12 years with no success (me, only about three years in various forms)
--- On Fri, 10/5/12, John M. Steele <[email protected]> wrote: From: John M. Steele <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [USMA:51936] Re: 2013 Associated Press Stylebook suggestions To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>, [email protected] Date: Friday, October 5, 2012, 6:26 AM The most serious is not even addressed. It is their general attitude towards metric and their recommendation to just convert everything to Customary and drop the metric entirely. However, I think they should correct usage errors before we even begin to try to change that. If I lump the two wrong symbols into one item, and throw two erroneous definitions in with lack of reference: *No authoritative reference, hence no way to correct mistakes *Use of random, made-up abbreviations instead of proper symbols *Obsolete units for ionizing radiation I can reduce it to one. If they had a reference, read it, and adhered to it, they wouldn't have any of these errors. Five of the other items are merely examples of how badly they need an authoritative reference to learn correct usage from. The track and field reporting could be covered under their dislike for metric and lack of understanding of when the metric data is important to a story. So that gets us to two: *They don't know how to use metric properly *They hate metric But I think 3 pages and 7 specific examples has a nicer tone than how I really feel. --- On Thu, 10/4/12, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote: From: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: [USMA:51936] Re: 2013 Associated Press Stylebook suggestions To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Date: Thursday, October 4, 2012, 11:22 PM On the one hand, it is great that you are taking action. However, three pages might be a little too long for them to consider. What are the three most serious errors in the current stylebook? On Thu, Oct 4, 2012, at 08:41, John M. Steele wrote: Once again, the AP is accepting suggestions for revision to their stylebook. You can submit suggestions at: http://www.apstylebook.com/?do=suggestions The AP is responsible for most of the metric errors in journalism. Since the stylebook is wrong it requires journalists to make the errors, or have their articles rejected. The elusive hope is that if the stylebook could be corrected, the incident of metric errors by journalists would drop dramatically. Although I am no doubt beating a dead horse, I have again submitted my three page paper on metric errors in the AP Stylebook. I originally submitted it last year to the three editors by mail, and then via the suggestion form for the 2012 edition. I am 0/7 on the suggestions being accepted. (I've attached a pdf copy of last year's paper.) Email had 1 attachment: Metric Errors in the AP Stylebook.pdf 33k (application/pdf)
