The top 6 AP Style errors on resumes
Aug 12th, 2009 | By joegrimm | Category: Advice, The PackageResumes in AP Style show you know your stuff
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Journalistic resumes should generally be done in the style of the newsroom to which you are applying.
In a lot of cases, that still means the way the Associated Press does it, or AP Style.
Time and again, people claim on their resumes that they know AP Style, but they do not follow it. These are the top six style violations I see.
1. State abbreviations: This gets confusing because the AP asks for one set of abbreviations and the U.S. Postal Service uses another set. It is compounded by the fact that most resumes have a mailing address on them. You can go one of two ways: Use AP everywhere, including the mailing address or use the postal abbreviation in your mailing address and AP everywhere else. Do not spell out state names when they appear with cities and do not be inconsistent, bouncing all around.
2. Capitalization: A lot of job-seekers go crazy and become Excessive Capitalizers. AP says to capitalize titles only when they come directly before the name, and don’t do it with handles that are more descriptions than formal titles. Don’t capitalize majors, like journalism, that are not proper nouns, but do capitalize ones that are, like English.
3. Numbers: Spell out one through nine, then go 10, 11, 12 and so on. Why is this so hard to remember?
4. Punctuation: Colons introduce, dashes separate and hyphens join. But on a resume, people seem to run out of typographical devices and use these in all kinds of new and inventive ways. In many cases, there need not be any punctuation at all, as a little boldface and a line break signifies the change without extra typography.
5. Street addresses: AP tells us to abbreviate Avenue, Boulevard and Street when they are part of a numbered address. That’s all.
6. Seasons: Why do internships so often happen in Summer rather than summer? Is it to make seasons look like months? They shouldn’t.
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Hey, Joe, how about a couple of posts about resume style? One would think this is not necessary, but I see a lot of resumes from both students and working (or out-of-work) journalists that do not include the right stuff, in the right order. I have done some Google searches an discovered that there is not a lot of good, straight-to-the-point information about this.
Joe,
Exactly zero of those “errors” would cause an educator to blink. First and foremost, Educators like to Capitalize almost Everything. I think Schools of Education have Capital Letters as the “Default” mode on their Computers.
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AP style is ridiculous notion. It’s never really worked. Many news outlets simply ignore it or create their own house style. As an industry, let’s agree to phase out this dinosaur. News writers would be better off simply following standard rules of English grammar.
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I think I capitalized job titles because I saw it that way in resume books. Thanks for the AP reminder.
Demonstrating in an application letter or a resume that an applicant does not know AP style but claims to know it surely dooms the application. Because of wide-ranging assignments, especially in Washington, DC, I have listed familiarity, if not expertise, with several stylebooks and manuals on my resume — AP, Chicago Manual of Style, GPO, APA — but only because I do have experience with them. I’m not sure they helped my application, but they couldn’t hurt.
However, I have been grumbling for years about AP writers and editors failing to follow AP style. A copy desk colleague has been compiling examples of this failing for an article, but I don’t think he has submitted it. AP does not set a good professional example if its editors and writers don’t, won’t or can’t follow the AP Stylebook.
@zorro newsdawg And exactly what are the standard rules of English grammar? I know lawyers have a whole different set of style rules and a much more flexible vocabulary than the arbitrary notions of elitist English professors. But if you’re applying for a news job better use the AP book; if you’re applying for a law job better use the Bluebook; and if you’re applying to be a professor better use the manual of that university’s program. Believe me there are no universals in the US of A.
So you are saying that none of my job titles should be capitalized on my resume? Doesn’t this make it look sloppy? Should I at least capitalize the first word?
[...] Today’s Sugar: Proofread your resume, keeping the following AP style rules in mind. http://www.jobspage.com/2009/08/the-top-6-ap-style-errors-on-resumes/ [...]
On a lighter note, there is a very funny video on in which the AP Stylebook is part of the punchline call Grammar Nazis @ http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6060107/grammar-nazis. If you have ever wanted to strangle an editor, check it out.