Associated Press Stylebook

Use figures to indicate the dividing lines on a football field and distance traveled: 40-yard line, he plunged in from the 2, he ran 6 yards, a 7-yard gain.

We use “No.” as the abbreviation for number in conjunction with a figure to indicate position or rank: No. 1 man, No. 3 choice. Do not use the abbreviation in street addresses, with this exception: No. 10 Downing St., the residence of Britain's prime minister. Do not use the abbreviation in the names of schools: Public School 19.

There is no apostrophe when the quantity precedes an adjective in a quasi possessive term: six months pregnant, three weeks overdue, 11 years old. For more guidance on how to style a possessive term correctly, check the Stylebook's possessives entry.

We don’t abbreviate the names of U.S. territories. There are 16 such territories; 11 of them are small islands, reefs or atolls in the Caribbean or the Pacific, without native populations. The others — Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa — are self-governing, unincorporated territories. They send nonvoting representatives to the U.S. Congress. Residents of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and the Northern Marianas are U.S. citizens; American Samoans are considered noncitizen U.S. nationals. Residents of the territories cannot vote in presidential elections, though their delegates participate in national political conventions to choose the nominees. For datelines, use the community followed by the unabbreviated name of the territory: SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico.

Nov. 1 is All Saints' Day, observed in Western liturgical churches as a Christian feast in honor of all the saints, and Nov. 2 is All Souls' Day, observed in some Christian churches as a day of prayer for the souls of the faithful departed. Note that the Stylebook's official dictionary, Merriam-Webster Inc., styles both of these days as plural possessives with no S following the apostrophe.

Don't get bedeviled by the punctuation here: AP style is jack-o'-lantern. Happy Halloween!

The Stylebook's religious references entry offers guidance on how to style references to deities. Capitalize the proper names of monotheistic deities: God, Allah, the Father, the Son, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Redeemer, the Holy Spirit, etc. Lowercase pronouns referring to the deity. Avoid use of pronouns outside of direct quotations. Most monotheistic religions do not ascribe a gender to God, so pronouns in some cases might be inappropriate. Lowercase gods in referring to the deities of polytheistic religions.

AP style capitalizes Satan but lowercases devil and satanic.

We recently revised our entry on mpox, a disease caused by a virus that is related to smallpox but typically causes milder symptoms, such as fever, headache and body aches. In severe cases, people can develop a rash or painful blisters and life-threatening complications. It mostly spreads through close contact with someone who has mpox or with an infected animal. The illness was previously known as monkeypox because it was first seen in research monkeys. The World Health Organization changed the disease name to mpox in 2022, saying the name monkeypox could be construed as stigmatizing and racist. However, the virus is still referred to as the monkeypox virus. The term mpox virus is acceptable. For decades, most human cases were seen in people in central and western Africa who had close contact with infected animals. In 2022, the virus was confirmed to spread via sex for the first time and triggered outbreaks in more than 70 countries across the world. Mpox is pronounced EM’-pox. https://lnkd.in/enFcj-AD

When you subscribe to Stylebook Online with the Merriam-Webster Dictionary add-on, you can get search results from AP style and our primary dictionary at the same time. But you can also search each separately, as well as your own custom style guide. http://apne.ws/nVSYvM9