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Still Stylish: New Media Style, Punctuation and Grammar

Event Interactive 2011
Format Panel
Organizer Sally Jacobsen Associated Press
Description If texts and IMs have made abbreviations and lack of punctuation commonplace and blogging features casual writing, often by people without formal journalism education, is there a role for formal rules of word usage, punctuation, grammar and the like in new media? The editors of the Associated Press Stylebook think the answer is a resounding yes. Just as AP style has helped give readers of newspapers a consistent and clear experience since the 1950s, we believe consistent style encourages clarity and communicates professionalism online. We propose a panel of expert grammarians and writers to discuss the question of whether style still matters – even on blogs, even in tweets. The panel will take questions from the audience, and will accept suggestions for new terms to add to their rules and guidance. Even as blogs, texts and e-mails have turned some people into more casual writers, the AP Stylebook has grown. Customers bought about twice as many books in the first year of the 2010 Stylebook as in the 2009 book’s launch. AP Stylebook is such a newsroom staple that it spawned the parody Twitter account, FakeAPStylebook, which landed its own book deal.
Questions
Answered
  1. Why do we need consistent style anyway?
  2. What role does style play in the online environment?
  3. What are some areas where leading style experts disagree – the New York Times discouraging the use of the word “tweet” while AP Stylebook sanctions it, for example?
  4. How has the AP Stylebook evolved to meet the needs of increasingly tech savvy journalists?
  5. What are some of the most hotly debated tech terms in AP style?
Level Intermediate
Category Journalism
Tags journalism, news, writing