Week 7: AP Style

I'm writing this blog entry a day late, but I'm happy that I got busy enough to forget to write this on Sunday, because we recently got our feedback for the AP Style Story and our first test.
One of the biggest issues I saw in my editing, is when to capitalize. I don't know what it is, but I tend to capitalize far more often than normal. I think it's because I use capitalization to show importance in something or for emphasis.
This last weekend I covered the Weber State vs. Montana State football game, and I was trying to write the article for the game real time. When I went through to edit what I had written, I noticed I capitalized a lot of words that didn't need to be. For example, I would write, "It was a very sharp first possession for Senior Quarterback Jadrian Clark." The words "senior" and "quarterback" would not need to be capitalized. I also caught myself capitalizing the word "touchdown."
From the test, I realized that I don't really use semi-colons as well. It's just not something I am programmed to do. They are important though; I found that there are time to use them. Semicolons are most commonly used to link two independent clauses that are closely related in thought. Generally, my default action is to use a comma and a linking word; or to just end the sentence.
The error I found out in the real world, is from a Facebook post by NBA TV. It said, "The Washington Wizards was the most improved defense after the All-Star break..." Instead of the word "was," they should have used the word "had."