Otterblog

I received this email today from the Associated Press about an update to its stylebook:

A new entry has been added to the AP Stylebook:

Allah

The Muslim name for God. The word God should be used, unless the Arabic name is used in a quote written or spoken in English.

The AP spends a lot of time thinking about what to call God. Here’s it’s entry on deities:

DEITIES: Capitalize the proper names of monotheistic deities: God, Allah, the Father, the Son, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Redeemer, the Holy Spirit, etc.
Lowercase pronouns referring to the deity: he, him, his, thee, thou, who, whose, thy, etc.
Lowercase gods in referring to the deities of polytheistic religions.
Capitalize the proper names of pagan and mythological gods and goddesses: Neptune, Thor, Venus, etc.
Lowercase such words as god-awful, goddamn, godlike, godliness, godsend.

As I’ve noted before, names matter. What we call things—whether countries, people or deities—influences how we think of them. Islam is one of the three monotheistic religions that all spring from the same tree of Abraham. Sometimes, it’s hard to divine the intentions behind the AP’s style changes, but I think the point the news cooperative is trying to make is that God is God is God, and that having different religions call what many theologians consider to be the same deity different names is confusing and causes more problems than it solves.

On another front: Here’s how the Philly paper is covering the arrest of the students who have been arrested on identity-theft charges.