Staying Current with Web Copywriting Best Practices

Hi, my name is Chris Peterson. I'm a Web Copywriter with Straight North. If you've ever written copy for the web or for a blog, then you are probably familiar with the AP Stylebook. You probably also know that AP likes to make changes every year or so to coincide with trends. I'd like to take the time today to go over some notable changes with you. If your company as access to the Associated Stylebook online, you can check here for recent changes instead of waiting for a new book to come out. They have an entry right here called recent changes. One of the most popular changes this year was e-mail, which became email. You can drop the hyphen, and save that space for something more important. This is similar to a change last year that made website a single word, which happened to be a very popular move for writers who thought the two-word version looked a little silly. Smartphone, this is entered into AP Lexicon as a single word. Use this word generically to refer to iPhones and Blackberry's. One example that's not mentioned here is e-reader, which is a single word with a hyphen. You can use that to describe Nook or Kindle. AP also touches on such topics as Google by letting us know that it's a proper noun. It can be used as both a noun and a verb, so Google away. There you have it. We suggest checking in with the AP Stylebook from time to time to make sure you are up with trends, and that you don't get left behind. Again, my name is Chris Peterson. I'm a Web Copywriter. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.