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As Alex notes, the book has value. You should understand, though, that it is written from the perspective of newspaper journalism. As such, it is much more oriented toward minimizing keystrokes and inches than is typical in book work. So, for most tech writing purposes, if AP and Chicago offer conflicting advice, follow Chicago. (If you are editing a news release, though, by all means follow AP exactly.)
For example, in books we generally spell out the names of states. In newspapers, they are always abbreviated. In books we generally spell out numbers below 100. In newspapers the cutoff is 10. In tech writing, most editors choose to use the serial comma preceding _and_. In AP style it is never used. AP also tends to ignore the existence of the en dash as a distinct punctuation mark, uses quotes instead of italics in many places, and does a number of other things to accommodate the limitations of older newspaper typsetting equipment.
So use the AP manual for its strengths, but don't throw out Chicago.
Dick
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