Like a kid on her birthday, I always get excited about the release of the latest edition of the AP Stylebook. I love searching for new entries to find out how our use of language has evolved. In fact, I still have my very first wire-bound edition from journalism school, and it’s fun to see how we referred to “new” technology, like fax machines, back then.
From Flickr User allaboutgeorge
Last week, AP released the 2010 version of its guidebook for journalists, and the changes are great conversation starters. Some highlights:
- Twitter and Facebook are capitalized, despite both social networking sites’ trendy use of lowercase logos.
- Web site is now website. Web master is now webmaster. Web page is still Web page. Uh, OK.
- The economic misery we’re all enduring is now known as the Great Recession.
- California roll is finally popular enough to earn its own entry.
- The movement known as the tea party made the book, but it didn’t rate capitalization.
- Unfriend is the preferred way of describing someone’s virtual act of abandonment, but the less-used defriend is also acceptable.
- Definitions and usage rules for some terms are still a little fuzzy, and I expect to see updated–and clearer–entries in a later edition. Potentially specious references include social networking, social media, mashup, and liveblog.
Today I subscribed to the online version of AP Stylebook, which allows the user to enter notes and customize entries. I’ll miss the “new book” smell of a hard copy guide, but I’m excited about all those seconds I’ll save by not having to actually get up from my desk to grab it from the bookshelf.
