Most newspapers refer to the Associated Press Stylebook as their guide for determining various questions of word usage and what have you.

Newspaper writing style is a complicated issue. In some cases, there are firm right or wrong answers about grammar or spelling. In other cases, there's more than one correct way for the general public to write something, but for the newspaper's purposes we have to agree on one of those right answers as a standard. The AP stylebook answers a lot of those questions. For issues that aren't covered by the stylebook, any given newspaper may have its own individual policy.

We can't and don't expect people who submit news items to know all about newspaper style; we'll always end up having to rewrite those items to conform. But here are some style points you might find useful to remember if you often submit information to the newspaper:

Dates: When it comes to dates, we use either the day or the date -- but almost never both. If something takes place in the next seven days, we use the day. ("The revival will begin Sunday.") If something takes place farther out than that, we use the date. ("The revival will begin March 13.") People are constantly calling in club meetings or church news announcements, and I can hear them over the phone fumbling around trying to find a calendar so that they can tell me the date, even though I don't need the date because the meeting is taking place within the week. I try to stop them, but they are sometimes pretty stubborn about it.

That having been said, when you're mailing in a written news item, it is helpful to include the date in your submission, even though we won't use it in the newspaper. That's to avoid any confusion -- for example, if your church news item were to arrive late or be misplaced and we weren't sure which week was being referenced.

Times: AP style is to use this format: 5 p.m. (not 5:00 -- for times at the top of the hour, the :00 is unnecessary, a waste of space). Style calls for "a.m." and "p.m." in lower case letters, with periods. Again, this isn't a matter of right and wrong, only of newspaper preference.

State abbreviations: I got a press release this week stating that a particular director had "performed and produced plays in NY, FL, VA, AK and TN." Newspaper style aside, this is just wrong. In prose, when state names stand by themselves, you spell them out: New York, Florida, Virginia, Alaska (although I suspect the original writer meant Arkansas instead) and Tennessee. Using abbreviations -- especially two-letter postal abbreviations -- in this context sounds lazy, because it is lazy.

Newspaper style requires that when we use a city and state in regular news copy, we use the old-fashioned state abbreviations: "Seattle, Wash." The two-letter postal abbreviations are used only in the context of mailing addresses: "Memorial contributions may be sent to P.O. Box 380, Shelbyville TN 37162."

Religious titles: This is a hard one to explain, but it comes directly from AP. The AP stylebook prohibits the use of casual titles like "father" or "pastor" before a clergy member's name (unless it's in a direct quote). More formal religious titles, such as "the Rev.", or "Bishop", are allowed. AP doesn't mention "Elder," but I've always taken that as a formal title. Some denominations, particularly the Church of Christ, object to "Reverend" as a title, and we want to honor any denomination's wishes when we can.

So when we get an obituary or a church news item stating that "Brother John Doe" will be speaking, we usually just drop the title altogether and refer to him as "John Doe," except in cases where we're fairly sure that "Rev." applies, in which case we might go ahead and call him "the Rev. John Doe." If you're submitting a church news item, you can make things easier for us by using "the Rev." when it applies and by always leaving off "Brother."

"Pastor," if your denomination uses it -- some don't -- is acceptable as a description ("John Doe is the church pastor") but not as a title ("Pastor John Doe will be speaking").

Again, we're not talking about right and wrong but about newspaper style and consistency. If you want to use "Brother" on your sign, or your brochures, or your letterhead, that's up to you. We just don't use it in the newspaper.

Phone numbers: For local phone numbers, the form is 684-1200. For out-of-town phone numbers, it's (931) 684-1200 -- not 1-931-684-1200, and absolutely, positively not 931.684.1200, which apparently started as some public relations or advertising person's attempt to be hip.

AP says this format for phone numbers is an internationally accepted one.

By the way, even though we let this slide a lot in the newspaper, there is no need to include the initial "1" when writing a long-distance number -- even a toll-free 800 or 877 number. The "1" is part of your long distance service, not part of the phone number. Cell phone users, for example, don't dial "1" for long distance numbers. AP style is (800) 684-1200, not 1-800-684-1200. Readers can figure out for themselves whether or not to dial "1."

Sloppy e-mail: This isn't actually a newspaper style issue, just a pet peeve. When you send an e-mail to a business -- any business, not just a newspaper -- you need to take just as much care as if you were sending a business letter. Some people seem to believe that just because they're using e-mail they don't have to capitalize letters, check their spelling, or what have you. We frequently get e-mails in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS or without any letters capitalized, even in proper names. Either of those is poor form. ALL CAPS, in addition, makes the e-mail printout much harder to read, and keeps us from simply cutting and pasting the announcement into our computer system.

John I. Carney is city editor of the Times-Gazette and covers county government and other topics. His home page is lakeneuron.com.