Monday, October 8, 2012

Robbery/Murder: Write With (AP) Style

Is it 11:00 p.m. or 11 p.m. or 11 pm or 11 o'clock?

It's 11 p.m., or maybe 11 o'clock. Under times:

Use figures except for noon and midnight. Use a colon to separate hours from minutes: 11 a.m., 1 p.m., 3:30 p.m. . . . The construction 4 o'clock is acceptable, but time listings with a.m. or p.m. are preferred.

In the wake of this exercise, please be sure to review the AP Style listings for times.

Now, does the general AP Style number rule of spelling out numbers under 10 and using numerals for 10 and over count when talking about the time of day??

Actually, no. Here is what it says in AP Style under times:

Use figures except for noon and midnight.

So 9 a.m. is 9 a.m., not nine a.m.

Also, is it 5-feet-10-inch or 5'10 or five foot ten or 5 feet 10 inches?

It's the first one 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.

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