Friday, August 23, 2013

Search Engine Style Guide



Ever since I graduated from the J-School and started writing for a living, I’ve been walking around with a library of style guides in my brain. I’m surprised I can still hold my head up, or that I haven’t succumbed to spontaneous mental combustion.

Good news, Internetlings. Apparently, we’re on the cusp of a paradigm shift that will enable me to hit delete and clear my brain of everything I ever learned about words and how to spell and use them from the plethora of style guides and manuals that have festered in our society. The principle of collective collaboration is about to prevail.

Spell checker was the first slide down the slippery slope. Although, you’ll find that relying too heavily on its bodacious cerebral brawn will cause you to end up with sentences such as, “The team razed the school mascot under the setting son.”

An even newer brave new world entered my orbit the other day when I mentioned to a client that the editors of the 2013 AP Stylebook had decided the right way to write “healthcare” is “health care.” The client was having none of that, primarily because the content in question was for a website, sometimes written Web site or web site depending on whom you choose to Like or Follow. “In a case like this,” she said, “we defer to which search term is more popular among online users.” Survey says? Healthcare, one word – take that, loser AP!

“You know what this means,” my evil twin (ET) whispers. “If everybody who’s online right now writes something and spells dog as dawg, or cat as kat, the new spelling will become the most popular, and we can collectively, like, band together, and, like, totally change the English-speaking world.”  Better yet, ET continues, “Let’s really stick it to the man and all spell website as websyte.” Who’s game?

2 comments:

  1. Hi Malia, I enjoyed this post as a fellow spelling purist! Looking forward to working with you.
    -Sharon
    DGLM

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sharon,
      Thanks for your thumbs up. Sometimes I think I'm the only lone soul who gives a hashtag about purity of prose.

      -Malia
      MaliaMania

      Delete

Thanks for reading my ramblings.