Writing about financial independence, personal finance, the markets, or just news in general. You are going to need to know how to write AP Style Federal Reserve rules.
The Fed AP Style
First of all, you need to get the AP Style rules for the Federal Reserve right. The Federal Reserve Board is capitalized because it is the proper name of a specific entity. Technically, according to the AP Stylebook, you will need to spell out the Federal Reserve Board the first time. You can use The Fed, The Federal Reserve, or even just, the board, on second reference, if you are getting tired of typing federal all of the time.
If you want to be technically accurate, it is the Federal Open Market Committee that actually sets the interest rates.
AP Style for Federal Reserve Interest Rate
So, now that we know the AP Style rules for the Fed, it’s time to move on to the subject of interest rates because that is probably why you are writing about the Fed in AP Style.
- Time to get into some financial world technicalities. The Fed does not actually set an interest rate. It sets a target interest rate that it then makes happen by buying or selling bonds and treasuries to either add money into the system (lowering interest rates) or taking money out of the system (raising interest rates.) Unless you are writing about the Fed itself, no one cares about this nuance.
- The Fed does a few different things, but when everyone is writing about the Fed and interest rates, they are talking about the Federal Funds Rate.
- No person actually has anything to do with the Federal Funds Rate. The impact is felt because many lenders and financial institutions base their varies interest rates on the Fed Funds Rate.
- When the Fed cut interest rates to 0% the first time, it felt like it sounded bad. So, they changed it to being a “range,” and then set that range at 0% to 0.25%. That means whenever the Fed acts you might see something about how the Fed set a range of 3.0% to 3.25%. This is not helpful to you as a writer. If it is not necessary to use the range, then just use the higher number. That is what they do with the Prime Rate.
- And, finally, what are the AP Stylebook rules for writing percentages? This one is actually pretty simple. If you use a numeral, then you use a % sign. If you spell out the numbers, then you spell out percentage. So, 8% or eight percent. Choose your poison.
Federal Reserve AP Style Writer
As a fellow financial writer, I end up writing about the Fed and interest rates a lot. I understand your compulsion to dive into how the Federal Reserve Open Market Commitee works, and how banks use the Federal Reserve rate to lend money to each other overnight, and so on. Unless you are writing about the Fed itself, don’t waste your time. Readers don’t want to hear it. They want to know what the interest rate is. Editors know this too. I’m telling you this from experience so that you don’t end up wasting an hour writing a detailed investigation into how the Fed works when the article is about credit card interest rates only to have it slashed in the editing room.
