Associated Press Attempts To Stay Relevant With New Stylebook

The Associated Press today announced their newest AP Stylebook, this time focusing on social media guidelines. The “page turner” includes such changes as turning “Web site” to “website” and includes 41 additional definitions, use cases and rules.

What makes no sense from my point of view is turning “smartphone” into “smart phone” which from my 14 years experience in the cellular industry is just simply wrong. They’ve also hyphenated “e-reader” and they list “fan”, “friend” and “follow” as nouns and verbs.

Acronyms also make an appearance including ROFL (Rolling On The Floor Laughing), BRB (Be Right Back), G2G (Got To Go) and POS (Parent Over Shoulder) among several others.

As expected they’ve also included such favorites as “retweet”, “trending” and “unfriend” although “defriend” is also acceptable.

Taking a step away from new media, the AP also suggests that journalists confirm sources and information they find on blogs, through tweets and while using other forms of social media.

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The official AP Styleguide is available for purchase today.

What do you think about the new guidelines? As a blogger, I’m most excited to see new emphasis placed on social media by the Associated Press, on the other hand, I’m really bugged by their decision to simply change how “Smartphone” is used.