Has this ever happened to you that you finished reading a blog, and felt that the entire post was written for you? The sentences, the storytelling quality, and even the paragraph breaks felt like it was written keeping your thought process in mind?
Sounds familiar?
Well, that’s the power of a writing style guide! It brings consistency and clarity to your blog, which eventually helps it become a lot more relevant for the readers. And that’s the reason why almost all professional blog writers for hire stick to the AP stylebook.
But, out of the major style guides like MLA, APA, and Chicago, why is AP style favored by blog writers across the world? Let’s follow this blog till the end to explore in detail.
What is the AP Style Guide?
Associated Press style, abbreviated as AP style, follows a set of writing regulations that were originally crafted for news writing purposes. This means the AP style was considered a standard for journalism and reporting.
However, times have changed, and the AP style has been widely adopted across different industries nowadays. Why?
That’s because the primary aim of AP style is clarity and conciseness. And that’s exactly the kind of qualities that make a blog post interesting and relatable to the readers. That’s also the reason why a majority of bloggers across the world prefer using AP style for crafting their blogs.
AP Style Guidelines: What You Need to Remember
Now that you have a fair idea about the AP style, here are some guidelines that you need to keep in mind while following it:
How to Write Headings
In AP style, the headings and/ or subheadings are all written in title case. This means you have to capitalize every word in the heading and subheading instead of prepositions (to, and, for, from, etc.), and articles (a, an, the).
Title-cased headings and subheadings are one of the signature elements of the AP style. That’s why you may find blog posts from the best content writing agencies across the world consisting of capitalized titles and subheads as well!
How to Punctuate
The usage of punctuation is fairly straightforward in AP style writing. The general rule of punctuation is to use a single space after every full stop, exclamation mark, or interrogation mark.
Another interesting thing about AP style punctuation is that it refrains from using the ‘Oxford comma.’ What this means is, if you’re writing a series like “lions, tigers, and bears,” you’ll have to skip the last comma. Then again, you’re allowed to use the Oxford comma if the sentence becomes really confusing without using it!
How to Use Brand Names
There is an interesting way to approach brand names in the AP style of writing! So, if you’ve to mention brands, you’ll start by mentioning the full, official name of the brand. For instance, you have to mention ‘Intel Core’ at the beginning before you can go on using ‘Intel’ throughout the blog.
Another rule is that even if the brand name has a punctuation mark to it (for instance, ‘Yahoo!’), you have to write it without the symbol. This means ‘Yahoo!’ becomes ‘Yahoo’ in AP style.
Added to that, you can’t capitalize every letter of a brand’s name, even if the original brand uses it! For example, you won’t see any blog writers in India going with “IKEA” in AP style. It should always be ‘Ikea.’
The Benefits of AP Style
There’s a reason why reputed content writing companies in India and across the world stick to the AP style of writing. That’s because it comes equipped with a lot of inherent benefits like-
It emphasizes clarity in communication
AP Style is all about simple language and short sentences. This makes your blog posts very easy to read and understand, even for a layman! Readers, therefore, can grasp your message quickly and promptly understand what the blog wants to communicate.
It delivers consistency
AP Style brings a touch of uniformity to your writing. Consistent capitalization, punctuation, and bite-sized sentences make your blog look professional. This helps build trust with your audience and enhances your brand’s credibility.
It enhances readability
The rules of the AP style guide are crafted in a way that they offer maximum readability. This helps keep readers on your page longer. On top of that, concise content is less overwhelming. This improves the readability of your blogs, which results in better user experience and better engagement as well. That’s the reason you may see the best blog writer in India using AP style rather than the Chicago style for writing!
Wrapping Up
MLA style is extensively used in academic writing, while the APA style focuses more on clearly presenting scientific or technical content. However, blog writing is a totally different genre, where you have to keep the readers’ POV in mind while crafting a blog post. That’s exactly why you might see people looking to hire blog writers, as only professionals would understand the significance of specific writing styles, and create posts that hook users till the end!
