Time for dinner, Fannie!

So I have a quiz tomorrow over part of the AP (Associated Press) Stylebook (and our local newspaper stylebook, but blah blah, I'm sure you don't care that much about these details).

Anyway, the AP style guide (I'm calling it a guide, I like the way that sounds better--haha, which is ironic, since the book/guide tells you all about preferred terms) has a bunch of rules for how to abbreviate military titles, when to hyphenate, what's considered derogatory, names of international airlines, blah da bee blah da bee blah.

Oh and if you're wondering the proper spelling is "G-string," with a capital 'G' and a hyphen. Pay attention, people, there will be a quiz.

Oh man, I hope that's on the quiz tomorrow. It's open book, but I've got that one down.

Well the bulk of the book is an alphabetical list of, well, a whole bunch of stuff that you might come across while editing a news story (see G-string, above).

So, in order to study for my quiz(zes), this essentially feels like reading the dictionary, albeit abridged.

So this goes without saying, but it's pretty boring. I definitely skim. However occasionally some interesting things pop up (see G-string).

Tonight, for example, I discovered the following terms:

Ginnie Mae, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac.

None of them are people.

I still don't really get what they are/do exactly, but they're all housing/mortgage organizations (Ginnie Mae=Government National Mortgage Association, Fannie Mae=Federal National Mortgage Association, Freddie Mac=Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation).

Say what?!?

Did you all know about this?

I would have had to come across one or more of these terms several times within context before I would have deduced on my own that these were governmental giants, I think. Otherwise I'd think the New York Times was chatting about its cousins in Georgia.