Dorky, dorkier, dorkiest

I am an absolute dork. Or geek. Or nerd. It doesn't matter what you call it, I am it (The cheering you're hearing is twelve years worth of classmates who tried to tell me this for years). Overall, I'm OK with this. I wear my geekiness as a proud badge of honor, and go on with my life. But a geek, I am.

Just to provide some sort of frame of reference for this statement: I was, and am in fact, the type of person who loves reading a dictionary, thesaurus, or encyclopedia. I can hear a word like "egregious" on NPR on my way to work, not be 100% certain of how it differs from a word like "ostentatious", and then brood about that until I can walk up to my bookcase and look it up. Now I realize that many of you are writers yourself. Some of you have even written about looking up the spelling of words before using them in your blog. I know that others love learning new words as much as I do. So until today, I felt as though perhaps I wasn't that big of a nerd. that perhaps I'm not a nerd at all, but all those classmates were just completely uneducated and superficial.

But then today, my new copy of the AP stylebook came in. I don't teach journalism writing classes, so I didn't really need it. But I ordered it anyway. Because I'm a nerd. Or just an educated person eager to learn, you pick. But I quickly realized that I am, in fact, the biggest nerd in the world. Because you know what I am currently doing while on my lunch break? That's right. Reading the stylebook. And not just reading it, absorbing it. Committing it to memory. Exclaiming "huh!" at some of the more obscure references, and mumbling "I knew it!" at others. It's absurd.

Well, maybe it's not. I mean, if you're into writing, this book is truly your bible. It has the most interesting random and yet relevant facts you can think of listed in alphabetical order. Allow me to provide you with a sample.

"Prison, jail. Do not use the two words interchangeably. Prison is a generic term that may be applied to the maximum security institutions often known as penitentiaries..All such facilities confine people serving sentences for felonies. A jail is normally used to confine people serving sentences for misdemeanors, people awaiting trial or sentencing..."
Call me ignorant, but until 11:30 this morning, jail was jail to me. The big house, the slammer. The place you went if you broke the law. But apparently jail is not just another word for prison. There's a fine distinction. I mean, who knew?

Or how about those things that people do, and that annoy the pants off me?

"Off of. The of is unnecessary. He fell off the bed. Not: he fell off of the bed"

Thank you!

And then there are those things that everyone talks about, and yet I'm never quite sure what they mean. Usually it's things related to economics, or chemistry, or physics. Classes I loved but just don't remember enough of to make sense of some of it. No more! The AP Stylebook has come to the rescue:

"Hedging. A method of selling for future delivery whereby a dealer protects himself from falling prices between the time he buys a product and the time he resells or processes it..."

And then the lovely little details, presented with a clear "well duh!" undertone:

"Hangar, hanger. A hangar is a building. A hanger is used for clothes."

Did you hear the "you idiot" at the end of that entry too?

And then of course there are entries that are just words; a way to help people figure out how to spell obscure words such as "taleggio cheese" and "scurrilous", and remind us that it's "toward" and not "towards". And those entries that focus on appropriate word usage:

"Ghetto, ghettos. Do not use indiscriminately as a synonym for the sections of cities inhabited by the poor. Ghetto has a connotation that government decree has forced people to live in a certain area."

It's amazing.
And I just realized there's a whole section punctuation, media law, sports, and business. I am taking this book home tonight.