05 May, 2010

Finally! Style embraces practice

 

I got some good news while on vacation. The word “website” has been embraced as the proper spelling for “Web site”.

I got some good news while on vacation. The word “website” has been embraced as the proper spelling for “Web site”.

The journalists at AAPG use Associated Press’ style book to guide the proper spelling of words and treatment of abbreviations. According to AP’s styles the “Web” is a proper noun and is synonymous with the “Intranet” so a “Web” site was two separate words.

However, practice by the public over the years dictates many of the styles and even words included in some of our dictionaries as well as the spellings of words. Thus, the public has won and, thankfully, “website” is embraced. No more correcting of text submissions! Yippee!

Interestingly, some of the changes highlighted in the AP press release about the stylebook was that the word “text” has become a verb and “texted” and “texting” are now officially accepted. Twitter even made the cut!

I also observed that if you want to access this information (to coin a popular commercial) – “There’s an app for that.” You can actually purchase an app for quick reference or you may subscribe to the stylebook to see all the new additions.

The comment on the blog where I read the announcement, however, was something like – “now if we could just resolve ‘e-mail’ to ‘email’.”

BTW – when you were growing up, did some adult in your life (or older sibling) tell you there’s no such word as “ain’t” in the dictionary? Well, I believe “ain’t” is now found in the dictionary.