May 18, 2011 admin
Can you smell what the AP Stylebook is cooking? The 2011 edition is fresh out of the oven, fully revised with 500 changes, including a new Food Guidelines section.
The right-hand tool of journalists and writing professionals, the stylebook has created the Food Guidelines section dedicated to writing styles of food, wine and spirits. According to its announcement, the guide says it produced a cooking centerpiece because of the rising interest in culinary media as well as the trend of local and organic eating. Consolidating more than 400 food names and terms, including 140 new entries, following are some examples:
- adobo sauce – A spicy red sauce made from chilies, herbs and vinegar that is common to Mexican cooking.
- amuse-bouche – French, a bite-sized dish served at restaurants before the meal, usually free.
- blind bake – To bake the crust of a pie before filling it.
- farmstead – Generally used to describe a cheese produced solely from the milk of one farm.
- ghee – A clarified butter used in Indian cooking.
- huitlacoche – Also called corn smut. A fungus that grows on corn. Considered a delicacy of Mexican cuisine, it has a smoky-sweet flavor.
- locavore – The preferred term for a person who strives to eat locally produced foods.
- orecchiette – A small, disk-like pasta.
- pears – In general, capitalize most varieties, including Anjou, Asian (also called apple pear), Bosc and Bartlett.
- sashimi – A Japanese dish of thinly sliced raw seafood.
While these entries may satisfy foodies, there are guidelines that should appeal to techies. These changes are quarterbacked by the revision of email from e-mail, omitting the hyphen and earning thumbs up from most writers. Smartphone and cellphone are now unionized as one word and lowercase, while other entries include bedbug, confidant, frontman, pat-down and zip line. The book also includes updates to its social media guidelines, which it unveiled for the first time last year, with 20 new entries such as geotagging and link shortener.
What changes are you looking forward to, either for 2011 or 2012? If you’re hungry to learn more AP style, check out Twelve Common Mistakes of AP Style.
