The Associated Press organization was first created in 1846. The first company-wide AP "guide" did not cover English grammar. It was more of a brochure with 24 pages of various titles and corporate structures of the Associated Press organization and was first published in 1900 under the title "The Associated Press". Although a formal English grammar style guide did not exist across the organization through the 1800s, individual bureaus were known to have maintained similar internal style guides as early as the late 1870s. The first corporate-wide style guide, with a complete reference to American English words and grammar, was released in 1909, under the title:
"The Associate Press Rules Regulations and General Orders". By the early 1950s the publication was formalized into the
AP Stylebook and became the leading professional English grammar reference by most member and non-member news bureaus throughout the world. Due to growing demand by non-member journalists and writers working in public-facing corporate communications, the AP published their first official "stylebook" for the general public in 1953 under the title
Associated Press Style Book; the first publication focused on "where the wire set a specific style". For nearly a quarter century it assumed its reader had a "solid grounding in language and a good reference library" and thus omitted any guidelines in those broader areas. Secondly, in 1977 the book was published for the first time by a 3rd party publisher –
Lorenz Press. Thirdly, in 1977,
United Press International and AP cooperated to produce stylebooks for each organization based on revisions and guidelines jointly agreed to by editors of both
UPI Stylebook (Bobby Ray Miller) and
AP Stylebook (Howard Angione). In 1982, Eileen Alt Powell, a co-editor of
AP Stylebook 1980 edition, stated that: In 1989, Norm Goldstein became the
AP Stylebook lead editor, a job he held until the 2007 edition. however it was later discontinued in 2015 in favor of users simply accessing the
AP Stylebook online edition through their desktop or mobile browsers. In March 2019 AP created an
Archived AP Stylebooks section on its apstylebook.com website where anyone can access previous versions of the
AP Stylebook starting from 1900 "brochure on AP corporate structure" and all the way to 1977 edition. The first Spanish AP stylebook was created in 2012, after requests from the AP Mexico City bureau and others to develop such a stylebook. The bureau at the time was looking for ways to expand into Latin America while bridging the language barrier. In 2013 the AP Spanish Stylebook came into fruition and is now available to everyone. The Spanish AP stylebook is also referred to as the
Manual de Estilo. The most recent print edition is the 2020–2022
AP Stylebook, available spiral-bound directly from AP, and as a
perfect-bound paperback sold by
Basic Books. Creation of
AP Stylebook has been helmed by lead editor Paula Froke since 2016. In early 2023, the stylebook attracted attention for suggesting that "
the French" could be an offensive term in a tweet promoting
people-first language; there was considerable mockery of the suggestion, and the AP subsequently retracted it. After American president
Donald Trump issued
Executive Order 14172 to rename the
Gulf of Mexico as the 'Gulf of America', the Associated Press style recommended both names were to be used, as "Mexico, as well as other countries and international bodies, do not have to recognize the name change", and "the Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years. Following this, Associated Press journalists were prevented from covering several events in the White House, due to the news agency's use of the 'Gulf of Mexico' name. The White House then banned the Associated Press indefinitely from the
Oval Office and
Air Force One due to their reporting over the gulf's name. ==Influence on American English==