In an announcement that took many grammarians and Mount Carmel faculty members by surprise, the Associated Press Stylebook editors announced that their upcoming 2015 stylebook will include a major change in the way capitalization is handled, as in, there won’t be any.

The AP Stylebook is the definitive usage resource for newspaper and magazine editors and writers who are expected to adhere to this change. Elimination of capital letters will have a significant immediate impact on English and journalism classes and testing at Mount Carmel and throughout the English-speaking world. It will also affect keyboards, phones, digital tablets, signage, and automated grammar correction programs.

The AP Stylebook editors, as well as many others, have been explaining and refining the specifics of capitalization for years, apparently with mixed emotions. Prior stylebooks have distinguished between Election Day and election night, Electoral College and electoral votes, God and god-like, French flies and french fries, as well as Governor Smith and Smith, governor of New York. The editors have decided that continued refinements to distinguish between upper and lower case usage are unproductive. Texting has brought additional focus on the irrelevancy of capitalization.

The editors apparently decided that a scorched-earth approach was best and will decree that no capital letters are to be used in any written communication, commenting, “Since a period tells a reader that a sentence has ended, there is no need to announce a new sentence with a capital letter.” The editors added that, “Meanings are unchanged by capitalization, and capitalization has outlived its purpose.” The new usage of “bob smith” will still convey the name of a person, although the editors did not address possible confusion with proper names such as “rip torn,” “chevy chase,” or “trump tower.” Elimination of capitalization should increase typing speeds and reduce editing time. It will eliminate several pages of the AP Stylebook itself.

the new usage is effective april 1, 2015, according to editor darrell christian who hinted that additional simplification changes are in the discussion stage which would significantly impact other outdated grammar and punctuation usage especially in the u.s. and canada. we could well see changes in future ap stylebooks that may eliminate apostrophes, semi-colons, colons, dashes, and exclamation points! only commas, periods, and quotation marks may survive.

(this style directive is in effect for april 1^st this year and on april 1^st of each succeeding year.)