AP Stylebook Online

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As a magazine editor, I frequently refer to the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook with questions about punctuation, capitalization and such. I still have the copy I bought for my Journalism 101 class way-back when. Now you can access the Stylebook, a.k.a. "The Journalist's Bible," online at http://www.apstylebook.com/.

It's so handy to be able to go back and forth between a document I'm editing and the online Stylebook by just tabbing back and forth between the two. The online Stylebook also lets me compile my own custom stylebook of notes--keeping track of those tricky questions that seem to trip me up over and over again.

Does the punctuation mark go inside or outside the paranthesis? My online resource tells me:

PUNCTUATION: Place a period outside a closing parenthesis if the material inside is not a sentence (such as this fragment).
(An independent parenthetical sentence such as this one takes a period before the closing parenthesis.)

If you don't find the answer you're looking for, there's the "Ask the Editor" option, where you can e-mail your question directly to AP editor David Minthorn. And if you have a question about the AP or news in general, you can take advantage of the "Ask AP" option.

An individual annual subscription is $25. If you're a journalist or writing regularly for magazines, it's money well-spent.