Major AP style changes

Anyone catch the AP advisory that states that it is dropping state abbreviations from datelines effective May 15?

 

They give some sort of reasoning for this decision?

 

This was the advisory that passed yesterday:

Date: 4/3/2010 10:00 AM

BC-AP Style,Advisory/116
BC-AP Style,Advisory
EDITORS:

The Associated Press is changing its style on state abbreviations.

Starting May 15, we will spell out the names of U.S. states in all stories and datelines where a city is followed by a state name. SACRAMENTO, Calif., for example, will become SACRAMENTO, California.

State abbreviations will continue to be used in NewsAlerts and headlines.

In making this change, we will be creating a consistent and universal style for international as well as domestic use.

We also will drop the practice of including names of Canadian provinces in datelines. We will instead use Canada. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, for example, will become VANCOUVER, Canada.

The AP

 

MANCHESTER, NEW HAMPSHIRE

ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO

THISWILLLOOKSTUPID, NORTH DAKOTA

ANOTHERCHANGEFORNOGOODREASON, TENNESSEE

 

ANDWEREFUSETOUSETHEPOSTALCODESEVERYONERECOGNIZES, North Carolina

 

I didn 't even catch that, and I read the advisory wires every day. Quite a low-key announcement.

 

AP tells Twitter to suck it.

 

I think a lot of papers will ignore the style change and just rewrite the AP states to their old abbreviations. Can they seriously have gotten enough complaints from readers that don't know a Mo. from a Miss. to spell it out?

 

It's about time the rest of America got on board with Iowa and Maine, I guess.