Week 7 - Temperatures

One thing I learned from the AP Stylebook this week was the use of temperatures. I have been making these mistakes for a long time. I didn’t even know. One of the biggest tenets that it upholds is that there is no such thing as -15 degrees. You should use a word, not a minus sign, and that word should not be “negative,” but “minus.”

Also news to me was the fact that temperatures do not get WARMER or COOLER. That surprised me. I have been doing it incorrectly. The correct way to write it is to indicate whether the temperature is getting HIGHER or LOWER. It makes sense to me now.

The editing mistake I found for this week was in the women’s locker room of the warrior gym on Hill Air Force Base. It says, “Patrons must wear shorts, bathing suit, towel, when using the Sauna and/or Steam Room. There are several things wrong with this.

The most obvious error is probably the lack of a conjunction between the last two items on the list. It lacks clarity because the missing conjunction could change the meaning of the entire sentence. “Patrons must wear shorts, bathing suit OR towel,” could be one interpretation, “Patrons must wear shorts, bathing suit AND towel,” could be another.

 There is also a serial comma, another extra comma and (in my opinion) unnecessary capitalization of the room name.