Associated Press Style is the official style guide for journalists, public relations professionals and external communication at most organizations. For those in the communications industry, the AP Stylebook is our style bible, and without AP style our writing would be a disarray of inconsistent terms, capitalization and punctuation.

AP’s style experts host monthly Twitter chats from the @APStylebook account on topics that are frequently misused. This month AP Religion Writer, Rachel Zoll (@rzollAP) hosted a chat on frequently misused religion terms.

Here are a few religion writing tips I picked up from this month’s #APStyleChat:

1. In general, capitalize religions: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc.
2. Creator is capitalized when referring to God.
3. Do not capitalize atheism or agnostic.
4. Nonreligious has no hypen.
5. Pronouns referring to God are not capitalized: he, his.
6. Lowercase heaven and hell, but capitalize Hades.
7. Capitalize Sabbath, Bible, Quran and Torah.
8. Bible verses should be cited with no quotes as follows:

I can do all things through him who strengthens me: Philippians 4:13

Join the next #APStyleChat on September 19 as we discuss common mistakes with crime and court writing.

What common AP Style mistakes do you see among communicators? What questions do you have about AP Style use regarding religion terms?