Baseball Writing and the AP Stylebook

Writing about the World Series this week? Chances are you're following the guidelines of the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook.

Newspapers, magazines and other publications generally use the rules and guidelines listed in the AP Stylebook to standardize things like spelling, grammar, punctuation and word usage. Some publications develop their own house style, which writers would have to adapt to while leaving their AP book packed away in their desk.

The Stylebook devotes an entire chapter to sports, with each sport getting its own section that contains unique spelling, punctuation and more. The sentences below each include one or more items that don't jive with AP's baseball style. See if you can pick them out.

• Yankees centerfielder Aaron Judge had two hits and two RBI in the 6-3 victory.

• Shohei Ohtani followed his sixth-inning ground-rule double with a walkoff home run in the ninth.

• In 2000, the Yankees beat the Mets in five games and became the last team to celebrate a World Series championship at Shea Stadium.

They all look like accurate, error-free sentences, but let's see what the Stylebook has to say.

Sentence 1:

Aaron Judge is a center fielder, not a centerfielder, according to AP, and the acronym RBI is spelled RBIs when plural. Note the hyphen in the 6-3 score is not an en dash, which is typically used in this context. AP does not use en dashes.

CORRECT SENTENCE: Yankees center fielder Aaron Judge had two hits and two RBIs in the 6-3 victory.

Sentence 2:

More fun with hyphens! AP doesn't hyphenate modifiers like sixth inning double, so that one comes out, but the hyphen in ground-rule double stays in. And guess what's missing in walkoff. A hyphen, of course.

CORRECT SENTENCE: Shohei Ohtani followed his sixth inning ground-rule double with a walk-off home run in the ninth.

Sentence 3:

Just kidding, there's no style error here. I just wanted to write it.