Ink industry sues AP for dropping hyphen from email
Apr 1st, 2011 | By joegrimm | Category: J-Schools
Street signs do not enter into the hyphen controversy. © Andreas Weber, iStockphoto
By JOE GRIMM
The JobsPage
The ink lobby has filed suit in federal court against the Associated Press and requested an immediate injunction reversing the AP’s decision to drop the hyphen from email.
AP’s style ruling, which affects newsrooms and magazines across the country and around the world, has already cost the ink industry more than 50,000 gallons of ink in reduced demand for hyphens.
Billy-Joe-Bob-Herman W. Stufflebeamermizer, lobbyist for the Amalgamated Conglomeration of Ink Manufacturers, Purveyors and Speculators, called the style change capricious, arbitrary and a disaster for workers whose livelihood depends on print media using lots of ink.
With fewer hyphens to print, ink sales plummet
“This is a real hardship for our people and their families,” Stufflebeamermizer told www.jobspage.com. “Some of our customers even sent ink back to our plants, saying that with the elimination of that hyphen, they would not be needing all the ink they had ordered. Ink orders for the rest of the year have been slashed.” He urged reporters and editorial writers in particular to shore up ink demand by writing about people with long names and, when possible, using semi-colons rather than commas and adding a lot of dashes.
Stufflebeamermizer estimated that the style change has already cost association members half a billion hyphens in ink. He declined to put a dollar amount on them.
“We need the journalists’ help,” said Stufflebeamermizer. “Ink has always been there to stain you wretches. Now, it is our time of need. Let’s see the love.”
March-July already a slow time for ink makers
AP’s timing, with the announcement in March, and new stylebooks expected in May, could not have come in a worse season for the ink industry.
Spring and summer is traditionally the slow time of year for ink sales. March, April, May, June and July require much less ink than the months September through February. The difference is so marked that the ink conglomeration sought federal relief in the mid ’90s, asking that February be lengthened to 31 days and that May be shortened to 28. The measure was not introduced.
Methuselah Theophilus Nebuchadnezzar Nagengast, Jr., executive director of the conglomerate, said that the style change appears to be part of a pattern of style changes by the Associated Press designed to depress ink demand. He called it a conspiracy.
Industry backs candidates whose names require a lot of ink
“It is no accident that this hyphen decision comes the year after the AP decided to stop capitalizing the W in website,” said Nagengast.
“Capital W is our bread and butter. We make a lot of money off that letter. It is the main reason we contributed so heavily to George W. Bush’s campaigns. Four years of Al Gore would have ruined the ink industry.”
The conglomeration was also a big supporter of former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenneger.
“We tried for the longest time to have web addresses built with WWW,” said Nagengast. “That would have left us with something when almost everything went online, but no. At least a decision to go lower case leaves us with something. It’s like a compromise. This year’s decision to completely drop the hyphen in email leaves us empty-handed.”
Nagengast said the ink industry is considering a second lawsuit based on what he calls the AP’s pervasive campaign to discourage ink production.
The newsprint industry has filed a friendly brief in support of the ink industry’s lawsuit. Paper mills have seen slackened demand, brought on by the AP’s decision in March to remove the space in smartphone, handheld and cellphone. Paper demand slumped when the AP took the space out of website in 2010, and this year’s round of space-eliminating decisions is a triple-whammy for paper makers. While removing spaces does not affect ink sales, the loss of those spaces is expected to reduce demand for newsprint by several thousand metric tons a year.
There is no comment from the Associated Press for this April Fools’ Day story.
