Esports News
Associated Press provides style guidance for ‘esports’
Esports continues to gain prominence, gaining recognition as a stand alone term by prominent media authority, the Associated Press.
Since the rise of competitive video gaming the terminology to describe the activity and cultural phenomenon was ‘Electronic Sports’, shorted to ‘e-Sports’ and then ‘eSports’. This distinction was purposed to draw a connection professional sports and competitive video gaming, being electronic.
Over time this term would carry its own definitive meaning for the participants, now athletes, and the industry which stands firmly and uniquely as its own.
The Associated Press (AP) have confirmed new usage guidelines for ‘esports’ in the 2017 edition of the AP Styleguide to be published 31st of May. The AP are an an authoritative body that provides industry definitions for the proper usage of grammar and style for American journalists, often adopted globally.
Yesterday Lou Kesten, a video game editor for AP, commented through Twitter that the change highlights rising “industry trends and general usage”.
Because of industry trends and general usage, esports joins email as exceptions to our general e-word rule to use a hyphen.
— Lou Kesten (@lkesten) March 24, 2017
- Within a sentence, it is written as “esports”
- The “E” in esports will be capitalized at the beginning of a sentence.
- Within a title or header, esports can be written as Esports or esports
- Esports is not a proper noun and should not be capitalized mid-sentence.
