The French poodle rule

The French poodle rule is fairly straightforward.

French is a proper noun and therefore is capitalized.

But poodle is a common noun. There is no province called Poodle. Thus, poodle is lowercase in news style, no matter if the American Kennel Club insists it is up in their press releases and on their Web site.

Thus, as with so many things in writing and editing to style, we need to extrapolate to other instances of this in considering whether the first letter of a word is up or down. Sometimes, of course, that takes some research to determine if a name is derived from a proper noun.

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Common AP Problems That Need to be Mastered

These items are headings listed in your AP stylebook. Familiarize yourself with each of them and the bold-face links to related terms.


AP – A-C:

abbreviations and acronyms
academic degrees
academic departments
academic titles
accused
addresses
adopt
ages
allege
another
a.m., p.m.
animals
another
anti
apostrophe
arrest
boy
burglary, larceny, robbery, theft
capitalization
co-
collective nouns
collide
colon
comma
compose, comprise, constitute
composition titles
courtesy titles


AP – D-H:

damage, damages
dimensions
datelines
directions and regions
distances
dollars
essential, non-essential clauses and phrases
exclamation marks
fewer, less
fractions
full-
full-time, full time
geographic names
girl
his, her
homicide, murder, manslaughter
hyphen


AP – I-M:

include
injuries
innocent
job descriptions
lady
legislative titles
media
military titles
millions, billions
Miss
Months
Mr., Mrs., Ms.

AP – N-S:

nationalities and races
numerals
party affiliations
percent
percentages
periods
plurals
possessives
pupil, student
quotations in news
quotation marks
race
re-
religious references
religious titles
second reference
semicolons
state names
subjunctive mood


AP – T-Z:

temperatures
that (conjunction)
that, which, who, whom
time element
time of day
times
titles
trusty, trustee
weapons
weather terms
weights
well
women
years
youth
ZIP code

Other Important Sections:

Sports Guidelines
Business Guidelines
Guide to Punctuation
Briefing on Media Law
Proofreader Marks

AP's Note on Dictionaries

For spelling, style and usage questions not covered in this stylebook, consult Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition, published by Wiley.Use the first spelling listed in Webster's New World College Dictionary unless a specific exception is listed in this book.

If Webster's New World College Dictionary provides different spellings in separate entries (tee shirt and T-shirt, for example), use the spelling that is followed by a full definition (T-shirt).

If Webster's New World College Dictionary provides definitions under two different spellings for the same sense of a word, either use is acceptable. For example, although or though.

If there is no listing in either this book or Webster's New World College Dictionary, the backup dictionary is Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, published by Merriam-Webster Inc.

Geographic Names

Webster's New World College Dictionary is also the first reference for geographic names not covered in this stylebook.

FOREIGN: The first source for the spelling of all foreign place names is Webster’s New World College Dictionary as follows:–Use the first-listed spelling if an entry gives more than one.–If the dictionary provides different spellings in separate entries, use the spelling that is followed by a full description of the location.
If the dictionary does not have an entry, use the first-listed spelling in the National Geographic Atlas of the World.On the Net:www.nationalgeographic.com

NEW NAMES: Follow the styles adopted by the United Nations and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names on new cities, new independent nations and nations that change their names.