Thursday, October 14, 2010

Murder -- Write With (AP) Style

Is it 5-feet-10-inch or 5'10 or five foot ten or 5 feet 10 inches?

It's the first on or the last one. AP Style, under "dimensions":

Use figures and spell out inches, feet, yards, ect, to indicate depth, height, length and width. Hyphenate adjectival forms before nouns.

EXAMPLES: He is 5 feet 6 inches tall, the 5-foot-6-inch man, the 5-foot man, the basketball team signed a 7-footer.

Use an apostrophe to indicate feet and quote marks to indicate inches (5'6") only in very technical contexts.

Moving on, in referring to the day of the week, should you have said yesterday or Tuesday (or Wednesday, depending on which day you filed your assignment)?

In general, it's the latter. Sayeth AP Style under "time element":

Use the days of the week, not today or tonight in print copy. Use the month and a figure where appropriate.


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