Face Off or Faceoff, and Other Writing Tips for the Olympics
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The AP Standards Center has provided an overview of the Winter Games and tips for writing about the Olympics at Sochi. The purpose of the guide follows, in an introduction:
"To help with spellings and usage in coverage of the Sochi Winter Olympics, The Associated Press compiled an editorial style guide of essential terms, spellings and definitions. Some terms are from the AP Stylebook: http://www.apstylebook.com/. Others are used in AP sports stories or contributed by Stephen Wilson, AP's Olympics beat writer.
In a section on "Spellings and usage," the guide offers these suggestions:
Capitalize games when attached to the host city or year: the Sochi Games and the 2014 Games.
When standing alone, spell games lowercase: The games open Feb. 7.
Olympics or Olympic Games are always capitalized: Winter Olympics and Summer Olympics. Each is staged every four years, but two years apart. The next Summer Games is 2016 in Rio de Janeiro.
Olympic (adj. without s) is always capitalized: Olympic gold medal, Olympic host city, Olympic flame, etc.
Discussion Starters:
- Read all of the style tips for the Winter Olympics. Which, if any, surprise you?
- Faceoff vs. face off follows the same rule for other nouns and verbs. What other examples fit this rule?
