The Associated Press announced yesterday that it has added a separate Social Media Guidelines section to its 2010 AP Stylebook. The new section includes information on correct use of such terms as “… app, blogs, click-throughs, friend and unfriend, metadata, RSS, search engine optimization, smart phone, trending, widget and wiki.”
The new Guidelines offer a profound change. For the first time, the Stylebook has decreed that website is one word. But they’re keeping e-mail old school: as far as AP is concerned, the hyphen stays.
On another note, while the AP Stylebook folks have given their guidance on writing the phrase search engine optimization, they sure have fallen flat on optimizing their press release page for search engines. Their browser window title is pr_060210a.html. Now, when was the last time someone Googled that sequence of numbers and letters?
— Leslie O’Flahavan
Tags: Social media, Style guides
Thanks for the heads up! We have been discussing the use of Web site, website, Web resources, etc. with an eye to changing our internal Communications and Style Guide – and this helps.
I wish they had gone all the way and made ’email’ legitimate, but maybe that’ll happen next time.
Cheers, Rob