Although I've fallen out of the habit of reviewing books, this stylebook warrants a few paragraphs for its ridiculousness, if nothing else. The 18th edition of the Canadian Press (CP) Stylebook has editor James McCarten and was published in 2017 - note the fairly recent publication date, because it makes the stubbornly conservative stances all the more unjustifiable.
While doing research on the stylebook, I came across a CBC article, "Recall 'embarrassing' edition of the CP Stylebook full of errors on Inuit, says Journalism Professor". There were fuck-ups at several levels here: the sole freelance Inuk journalist who contributed incorrect information, the editor for the Indigenous reporting style guide, and the CP Stylebook editor McCarten. McCarten said "we didn't see the need to go any further beyond in terms of double checking" which is ironic considering it was not checked even once. This is not a great look for a stylebook. This failure is made worse by the fact the CP stylebook is so proud of itself for its Indigenous terminology section. They mention it like three times in the introduction - 'We consulted outside sources! aren't you proud of us? I had to talk to a real life Indigenous person and it was terrifying and now I deserve a pat on the back'.
Straight from the intro we get this delightful gem, immediately proceeding a claim that the CP is guided by popular usage: "The Canadian Press won't be the first to accept the misuse of a word, and occasionally we're a bit stubborn about changes that seem to debase the language - especially as something as wildly unconventional as using a plural pronoun like they to refer to a person who identifies as neither a man nor a woman. Such changes, while important for fostering inclusiveness, must be deployed carefully, and used sparingly, for the sake of clarity". Ignoring that using 'they' as a singular pronoun is not unconventional, either historically or in everyday language, it's telling that CP's qualm with it is in the context of nonbinary people. Is it 'wildly conventional' then to describe someone as the wrong gender? Isn't accuracy supposed to be important here? The writers' hide between muddying phrases, like "seem to debase" and "fostering inclusiveness". If you're going to be so wrong, at least be brave about it!
Since this was on page 7, I didn't have high hopes for the stylebook in terms of telling me how to write compassionately or fairly, but I was still hoping to gleam some stylistic pointers. The book continues to confuse me with its mish-mashed sentences and obfuscating prose. The only possible reason for the heaps of clichés is carelessness. Another red flag (in a sea of red flags) was a photo accompanied by the caption, "Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau speaks to reporters outside the House of Commons. Journalists have a point of view, but it must not get in the way of balanced reporting." What a beautiful photo of Trudeau standing next to those journalists grappling with ethical standards (/sarcastic).
For fun, let's pick apart this sentence on the next page - "The best exercise for impartiality is to stop regularly and ask yourself: 'Am I being as impartial, honest and fair as I can be?'". Omission of the serial comma, in a stylebook, suggests that 'honest and fair' should be read as a pair, although I can't fathom why. It's funny that the method of adopting a characteristic is to ask yourself if you're adopting that characteristic, along with two other ones! 'Honest' is a particularly useless word here. I picture a writer who stops and asks themselves (sorry - themself), "Am I being honest?", then answers to themselves, "no, I've been lying without noticing it!" and rewrites the piece. I also wonder about the "as I can be". Under what circumstance would you be 'as honest as you can be' meaning slightly dishonest, but only when it's justified! (?) Finally, is this the best exercise for impartiality? I like to avoid conflicts of interest, get rounds of edits, and judge the credibility of my sources before giving them equal weight, but maybe I've been neglecting the real work of stopping and doing an impartiality self-assessment.
The section on social media and the CP is the same worn-out lecture on professionalism that I got in middle school. The best way to make fun of the section is simply to quote it. "But peril lies in wait for those who fail to respect the raw power and global reach of social media". Wow, not simply power, but raw power! Way to add more words to that sentence. The section gets weirdly specific about CP policies, making it less useful to "just about anyone looking for practical guidance" as the book originally suggests. I find it off-putting that journalists with the CP are encouraged to be on social media, but must be completely apolitical. The threat, "Anything you disclose via social media can be linked back to The Canadian Press, regardless of privacy settings. Act accordingly" seems straight from the mouth of an action-movie villain.
On to the 'quotations' section...I was delighted by "The Canadian Press takes a somewhat stern approach to any tampering with just what was said". I'm sorry, what? No elaboration is given about what a "somewhat stern" approach means, and how it differs than a properly stern approach. I would've thought that tampering with quotations is a serious offence, but the CP is too cowardly to even let that stand on its own (although it puts its foot down when it comes to using social media to talk about football). Also, can we take a moment to laugh at, "just what was said"? There must be a better way to phrase that. Ooh, I've got one. How about a simple "what was said"? In their style guides, Fowler referred to 'commercialese', and Garner added 'legalese', 'airlinese', and 'computerese' to his guide so that he could complain about some industries. I need to devote a stylebook to addressing 'journalismese', or whatever fucked up social construct allowed this monstrosity.
The CP takes a bold stance on disability (yes, this means brace yourself). It says, "they are people first; their disability is only one part of their humanity and most would say it is the least important part". Can you tell the writers are afraid of us? I would be offended if I wasn't so confused. Does this imply that the CP knows the attitudes of most disabled people? And is the reported opinion that their disability is the least important part of...themselves? their humanity? are the two different? why abuse the word 'humanity' then? I also admire how disability is the least, rather than one of the least, important parts. Like, my sensory processing disorder might not be hugely important to my personality, but it's probably not the least important part. That would be how many times I've seen Mad Men or the number of freckles on my ankles or something. Then they give the advice, "Never dismiss someone with an unqualified disabled, crippled, or the like. Write 'Romanov, whose hands are twisted with arthritis'". That Romanov sentence is a bizarre gold standard to set.'Twisted with' seems like unduly dramatic imagery, and I'm not sure why "Romanov has arthritis" is taboo.
Sexual orientation! This photo caption includes the tidbit, "the terms husband and wife can exclude some people, while others prefer them. Find out their preference and follow it". I wonder what kind of people would prefer husband and wife? Maybe....husband and wives? It's bizarre that this is the terminology that deserves consultation. The kind of advice the writers of CP policies feels is necessary is...alarming. I can't imagine a world where I learn that 'admitted homosexual' or 'gay lifestyle' isn't kosher from the CP Stylebook. And for some reason, non-transgender is preferred to cisgender. You were late to the party, Elon Musk: The Canadian Press got here first! Note that there is no section on transgender people. I guess we don't exist, except in an offhanded complaint in the introduction to justify your hatred for us.
I'd love to mock the section on internet viruses, but it's pretty unintelligible. Right after recommending that more neutral terms than terrorist be used, the CP warns against "glorifying the cyberterrorists who create these viruses". The clumsiness of the writing, even by CP standards, suggest that the section was hastily added as a response to some internal controversy.
The "Editing for Print" section is prefaced with the statement that editing is unpopular, a terrible attitude to introduce exciting and imperative work. CP says it is "invisible at best", which doesn't really make sense. I find that it's gratifying, improves accessibility, saves the newspaper from humiliation, and reflects values of thoroughness and accuracy, at best. In the CP's following turnaround sentences - but editing can be fun! - it says, "They don't challenge readers to get through a story - they dare them not to". While an editor preforms many services, writing a story to be invigorating is...not how I would describe the careful art of editing. The section lays out 8 principles, a meaty word to describe strands of advice that seem to have popped into the writer's head. Principle 7 is not to overedit - with no further definition or advice - and principle 8 is to edit only when you have a reason, and not so that the writing approaches how you would've done it. I don't know why principle 7 and 8 are separate. I now have to make the obvious joke: the section could use a good edit. I also feel like a blanket advice against editing too much could compromise the quality of a piece. That being said, this section does elucidate a lot of the other writing in this book.
The "common faults" subsection, under the "tools and technical guide" section, is closest to the topic of material I've read and enjoyed from Garner, Fowler, and Strunk & White. It does such a bad job of giving style advice though that I almost suspect foul-play: some wronged editor who's added all the confused clichés and abstractivitis. Advice is broken down into small chunks with labels like, "More than words" and "overloads". The former is a paragraph that says, "Tell the reader what has happened, certainly. But also help the reader understand why and how it has happened in terms that strike home". The latter says, "the overloaded lead is sure to turn the reader off". They do proceed to give examples, which should apparently clarify their explanations but do not. Especially for overloaded leads, I am genuinely confused about whether it's referring to a lead with too many words, too much information, too much technical information, or some combination of the three.
From the "sentences and paragraphs" section: "Readability has never been more important. People are busier and have less time than ever to read news". We're making some pretty broad claims about society now. I imagine a depressed newspaper manager, wondering why readership is decreasing and lamenting, 'it's this damn younger generation! They just have less time to read news! It's not because we're corrupt or irrelevant or anything!'
Then we get the super useful advice (sarcastic. any compliment is sarcastic) that "dropping 'that' often makes for smoother reading, especially in shorter sentences. But retain it to avoid misleading the reader even momentarily". People have written hundreds of words on this subject! There is frequently a correct and incorrect use of 'that' depending on the sentence! Removing 'that' as a rule of thumb, except when you arbitrarily guess that it would confuse a reader, is an insane way to go about grammar.
The English language collapses entirely by page 314 with the subsection title, "When metric?" Note that all other subsections have been at least coherent sentence fragments. The subsection "technical terms" seems to arbitrarily chose two illnesses (AIDS and influenza) to give background information on - maybe because of frequent errors involving these terms? but this is never stated.
Weirdly, the "words" section pretty much copies some of Garner's more passionate gripes, adverse versus averse, and allude to versus refer to, for instance. It deeply saddens me that someone can have read Garner and still write like...this. Because they're trying to shorten Garner into like ten pages, they misconstrue some of his ideas, too: Ambivalent, for example, is defined as "having mixed feelings".
Finally, the structure of the stylebook is nonsensical. In spite of the title 'stylebook', the book mostly consists of ad-hoc policies and general advice for all news-related situations. Freedom of Information Acts is nestled in the opaque "the working journalist" section, and "legal" handles both police searches to news offices, and what terminology to use when reporting on court cases. There's just enough content in the legal section to recognize that it's important content, but not enough to actually use it! Almost all sections end with the disclaimer that things are done differently in Quebec, making it especially ironic that this is the Daily's unique 'style guide'.
I admit that editors at the Daily take advantage of its ambiguous status, myself included. If scorned by other organizations on campus, we have the indignation of a newspaper that provides relevant news to students. When we make mistakes or cut corners, we retreat to the dismissive 'we're just student volunteers' stance. Obviously editors should hold themselves to the highest level of scrutiny possible, but I don't think the CP policies is the bar to strive for. They're written for the specific circumstance of national reporting in a large company with a clear chain of command. The conservatism packaged as reasonableness, cutting off corners on crucial topics (like...just getting tired of looking for more than one Inuk person to consult) coupled with the shoddy writing and unfettered pride in the CP, makes me doubt the integrity of its goals. Does the CP really want to provide fair news to all Canadians, or does it just want to ensure its financial survival? While I can't judge the CP at large, I can judge the writers of this stylebook, alongside its editor and whoever gave it the green light for publishing.