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”.
@ben_silverman 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
A group of editors present at the 2017 American Copy Editors Society convention in St. Petersburg, Florida drew comparisons between the term and email which once was also spelled as “eMail” and later on as “e-mail.” For future yes the new guidelines were concluded and confirmed by the AP to be:
- 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.
The Australian Esports Association will now adopt the changes in all of our materials and encourages the industry to match this new format.
This is another major step forward for the industry as esports continues to grow in prominence, prestige and value.
Please feel free to reach out to the Australian Esports Association through our website or at our Facebook page: facebook.com/australianesports
