View from the North 40: This should be National Word Appreciation week

In honor of 14-year-old Dev Shah of Florida, who won the 2023 Scripps National Spelling Bee Thursday, this week’s column is about official words.

Scripps uses the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary as its official word source, but here in the news world we consult The Associated Press Stylebook, first, and the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary, second — for spelling and usage of words that the AP stylebook does not cover. Or, as I like to say, only for words that AP can’t bring themselves to care about.

The difference between the two publications is that the primary objective of a dictionary is to tell us about the spelling, pronunciation, definitions and origin of words, while stylebooks, like the AP’s, tell users how they want things written, from spelling to grammar, punctuation, layout, use of sources and more.

But the largest section in the AP Stylebook is all about words — even if it doesn’t always make sense.

The AP dictionary section, which would seem to focus on words in the news, cares that you spell pooh-pooh, which is an expression of contempt or dismissal, but not at all about how you spell geopolitics, which is weird because it’s a combination of the words geography and politics so could very well be spelled with a hyphen, geo-politics.

AP doesn’t care. Sorry. Consult the esteemed duo of Merriam and Webster.

AP cares that seat belt is spelled as two words, like the rest of American English speakers, but wants cellphone spelled as one word. AP is a rebel like that.

The AP stylebook used to be adamant that underway, as one word, was reserved for references to watercraft and trains. Every other usage defaulted to under way, as two words. The AP gods changed that a few years back and made all usages one word: underway.

Our editor will never forgive them for caving to people too lazy to use the space bar.

Also, don’t mention that a drive-through is now a drive-thru, and that click-thrus are a thing.

But AP has stuck to their ways in some areas.

Doughnuts are definitely not called donuts, even if you’re at a Dunkin’ brand coffee and baked goods store — because the chain dropped the Donuts part of its name.

Which reminds me that AP points out the differences between brands and products: Kitty Litter the brand and cat litter the product. The same goes for familiar items like Band-Aids and bandages; Kleenex and facial tissue; Jeep and jeep, the military vehicle, as well as others … except for dumpster, although Dumpster has been trademarked three times.

I don’t know why, but I figure it’s nice that even in proper news print we can have a simple dumpster fire without getting all proper noun about it.

All the trans stuff — an even bigger issue than some people are worried about these days — is covered under the rules of prefixes which gives us transgender, because, well, AP said so; along with trans-Atlantic, because Atlantic is a proper noun; and Trans-Dniester, because the people who gave this name to their separatist sliver of land in Moldova said so.

Irregardless is one of the few listings with a description that says, basically, this is not a word. On the other hand, FBI, the abbreviation for Federal Bureau of Investigations, is a word.

So is OK, but not okay. Even in dialogue.

I find comfort in the fact that AP still cares about old-fashioned and colloquial words like gobbledygook, bobblehead, hodgepodge, nitpicking and nitty-gritty — that last one hyphenated in all its uses except where applicable as a proper name for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, thank you very much.

Featherbedding, though, sounds like an old-timey, country-bumpkin word but actually refers to a type of modern hiring practice.

AP keeps up with modern times, like Calcutta, India, is now known as Kolkata. Also, like cellphone, metadata is one word, and the two-word touch screen is a noun, but hyphenated touch-screen is an adjective. Double-click, though, is hyphenated in all uses.

The list of which nouns are hyphenated and which aren’t is mind boggling: shut-in, shut-off, shutdown; stand-in, standoff, standout; check-in, checkout, checkup; and buildup, mix-up, and mashup.

Don't get me started on adjectives and verbs.

This is why we have a stylebook. AP keeps things so confusing we can’t bring ourselves to care about remembering all the spellings.

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There’s no spelling bee for AP at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40 .