A Spanish Style Manual for the Web
Newspaper editors have style manuals that they follow as a bible. With online dictionaries or references gaining such a strong presence, a multimedia and multi-platform project has emerged that focuses on the proper use of language online and on social networks, blogging and new media.
The BBVA Fundéu Foundation will create in March a website for journalists, writers, language teachers and Internet users to know the basic uses of correct Spanish online.
This multi-platform style manual for PC, tablets and mobile devices, has no name yet. It will combine the search capabilities of the RAE dictionary and its Panhispánic Dictonary of Doubt, with the collaborative philosophy of Wikipedia and the advisory agency EFE or Wikilengua.
This will be Fundéu’s first blog and will consist of 11 thematic sections aimed at new digital formats. Some of these categories will give advice on how to write on Facebook or Twitter, as opposed to writing on Wikipedia for example.
The blog may also function as a spelling or typography manual, to teach the politically correct use of bold font (highlighted text) or case letters (which is intended to appear as a scream).
La nueva Ortografía de la RAE (The New Spelling of the RAE) has devoted a chapter on new ways of writing on the internet and writing SMS. Fundéu’s multimedia stylebook aims to extend this advice with the rules of usage for new media, social networks and blogs.
The website will include articles by experts from Spain, USA and Latin America, including the discussion and feedback generated by them.
The manual wants to become a reference for Spanish, such as similar free projects that exist in English. For example, the Yahoo! style guide for the web, which features a chat between experts and users who have questions about the language. However, the Fundéu project will also cover semantics on the web.
Thanks for this informative post. I think the idea of a style manual for new media was yet overdue. All linguistical evolutions will be collected and categorized in some way in every language. But in fact, I don´t thinkt that everybody will act in accordance to that. Especially jounger people love to express themselfes in a very individual way through language (and other things of course).
Greets