ACES Names Paula Froke the 2025 Glamann Award Recipient
By Neil Holdway, Past President, ACES Board of Directors
The Board of Directors of ACES: The Society For Editing has awarded its 2025 Glamann Award to retired AP Stylebook Editor Paula Froke.
The Glamann Award, named for ACES co-founder Hank Glamann, was created in 2007 to recognize people and organizations that have significantly contributed to ACES and the craft of editing. The Board of Directors decides whether to give the award each year and to whom.
As the AP Stylebook editor from 2016 until her recent retirement — concluding a 40-year career with the Associated Press — Froke was the obvious choice.
“When you think about the AP Stylebook, I hope you think first and foremost about the AP. The Stylebook is a reflection of what the AP overall is all about,” she said when she accepted her award before a standing ovation. “The absolute importance of fairness, accuracy, and attention to detail is deeply ingrained in us … What editors do is essential, now more than ever.”
A lifetime working for AP
Froke began her AP career as a Dow Jones News Fund editing intern in New York at age 19, after her sophomore year at Penn State University.
She joined the AP full time in Minneapolis in 1984 after graduation, then moved to roles in Detroit before transferring back to New York in 2000. She became a deputy national editor, leading the staff development of the AP National Desk and spearheading multimedia training there. She also worked as an editor at four Olympics.
Soon Froke was the assistant managing editor overseeing afternoon and evening operations at the AP’s Nerve Center in New York. In 2012, she became the AP’s special liaison editor, embedding herself with customers including Microsoft and its MSN News.
She was executive director of Associated Press Media Editors from 2017 to 2020.
Froke’s work as a member of the Stylebook team began with a bang when the Stylebook announced in 2014 that it would accept “over” in place of “more than.” Some editors rejoiced, some did not.
Read: ACES coverage of AP Stylebook updates
Leading the AP Stylebook through tumultuous changes
Froke took charge of the team in 2016, and the next year the Stylebook gave its first advice on the singular “they” — advice that in 2022 acknowledged broadened use. The Stylebook also added Indigenous Peoples Day in 2017.
Over the following year, as the #MeToo movement swirled, the Stylebook updated style guidance to prefer “sexual misconduct” over “sexual harassment.” Updates on surveys and polling also came; in presenting those changes, Froke emphasized, “The mere existence of a poll isn’t enough to make news.”
Also by 2018, the “collision” entry was updated to no longer require that two objects be in motion to “collide.”
Froke’s annual Stylebook updates at ACES’ conference always made national news and the sessions would be packed. The first to hear the changes, ACES audiences would gasp, laugh, applaud — and on occasion, rise with sustained acclamation.
In 2019, the Stylebook created the new umbrella entry on race-related coverage, addressing a long list of terms including “racist” and “racism,” “people of color” and “racial minorities.” That’s also the year that the Stylebook, inspired by then ACES Education Fund President Henry Fuhrmann, struck the hyphens in references to a person’s dual heritage, such as “Asian American” and “African American.”
All the big news of 2020 brought the Stylebook’s capitalization of “Black” and “Indigenous,” and its coronavirus topical guide. The next year, the book expanded its entry on disabilities, which was further refined in 2022. The Inclusive Storytelling chapter also came in 2022, as well as an entry to change “gypsy moth” to “spongy moth,” after consultation with the Entomological Society of America.
In 2023, the Stylebook expanded its entry on climate change and global warming, as well as the gender, sex and sexual orientation section that advised, among other things, that “deadnaming a transgender person, even posthumously in obituaries or other coverage, can be disrespectful to the deceased, their survivors and any transgender people.”
In 2024, Froke was elated to announce at ACES’ in-person conference that the AP Stylebook was switching to Merriam-Webster as its primary dictionary. The book also added a Criminal Justice chapter, plus a new checklist on self-editing and writing.
A worthy recipient
That’s just a short list of the changes to the AP Stylebook that Froke oversaw and crammed into the ACES conference presentations. But throughout her tenure, the Stylebook team never could quite satisfy everyone, including herself, with the damned Numerals entry.
Overall, Froke sought to steer the AP Stylebook to one that guides rather than dictates, taking cues from real English usage.
“I treasure my work with my brilliant colleagues past and present on the AP Stylebook team as we worked to add more substance, as well as style, to our guidance,” she wrote upon retirement.
In that way, Froke became a huge influence herself on the English language and the world of editing, including ACES. So we are proud to honor her with the 2025 Glamann Award.
REAd about Froke and the AP Stylebook presentation at ACES 2025
Neil Holdway has been on the ACES Board of Directors since 2005 and was its president from 2022 to 2024. He was the deputy managing editor of late news for the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago until the fall of 2023, and now he is a bicycling blogger and advocate who also does a little tax and finance work on the side; he currently serves as Past President (nonvoting) on the Board.
ACES: The Society for Editing
ACES: The Society for Editing is the nation’s leading organization of editing professionals, educators, and students. Founded in 1997 by copy editors, ACES is dedicated to improving the quality of the written word and the working lives of editors. It sets standards of excellence and gives a voice to editors in journalism, government, business, publishing, and beyond through top-notch training, networking, and career opportunities. ACES hosts an annual in-person conference and, since 2022, an annual virtual conference. ACES Academy hosts monthly webinars. ACES also offers certificates in editing, which it co-hosts with The Poynter Institute, a global leader in journalism.
