[ldmoray]

The author teaches courses on Journalism. Agree with the logical style all you want, professional journalism is written according to style guides, and those style guides more often than not dictate American Style punctuation. In this case, "the real world" includes the newspapers his students wish to end up employed at.

In the case of a professor taking marks off for punctuation issues when writing essays on history or economics or engineering, I agree that's wasteful.

[jdietrich]

The "real world" of journalism is now highly globalized and casualized. Young journalists should expect to work for a large number of publications as interns, freelancers or short-term staffers. In this climate, adaptability is a core skill.

It is perfectly appropriate for an instructor to specify a style for an assignment and grade accordingly. Dogmatically teaching only one style is outmoded and actively harmful.