When I was putting together the working style guide for The Gamer's Quarter, I went to the IGJA Style Guide wiki and found it in a dismal state. As a result, I mostly made up the videogame aspects of the GQ style from scratch. I was actually planning on updating our files based on recent issues, though I may now wait to see what this book has to say on some of them.

But I do find very odd Orland's implication that there needs to be a "standard" style for the entire videogame industry. Such a notion is absurd, and goes against the very notion of style, which is to encourage individuality instead of enforcing conformity. Different magazines are supposed to use different terms and phrases and spellings. That's what style is. It's "backward" versus "backwards," en dashes versus hyphens. What's important is that the publication itself is consistent, so that the same term doesn't mean drastically different things from one page to the next.

Style is, inherently, decisions made between two valid choices. There's no right or wrong, there's just the one that you're going to go with. There is no standard, there's just premade decisions written down so that the next time it comes up, you don't choose something different. The AP Style Guide doesn't ask that you leave off the serial comma because it's more correct or because it should be the standard, it does so because a decision had to be made.

More importantly, meanings and usages aren't created by a "standard" book that tells you what to say or what not to say, they're created by people using the language. When dictionaries write their definitions, they aren't basing their decisions on what they feel words should mean, they base them on the collected evidence of how words are used. Right now, people use the same event in a game might be called an "FMV", a "cinema", a "cinematic," a "cutscene," or even just a "movie" depending on the person or the emphasis of the meaning.

It's the same reason why editors should keep using an article in front of the Wii, because that's how our language works. For years now, we've developed a grammar for talking about consoles, and that grammar says that the Wii (and the NES and the Genesis and the Atari) get articles in front of them. A press release doesn't change that. And neither does a book.

As for usefulness, the general purpose of a style book is to save other people the trouble of doing the linguistic research behind making a style guide. Instead of reasearching each point, you can defer to the work done by another. But I'm hesitant to trust that the authors of this guide have done the appropriate homework.

To use the most obvious example, I've had issues with the choice of "videogame" as a "standard" for wuite a while. Not because I think "videogame" is wrong (there's absolutely no reason to say so), but the reasoning behind declaring it "right" has been so shaky. I addressed this before on David Thomas's blog where he proudly declared that he wrote the entry declaring "'videogames' not 'video games'" based on the fact that he likes it better and finds it slightly easier to type: http://www.buzzcut.com/article.php?story=20051209224148334

Last year, for The Gamer's Quarter, I wrote a three-page memo detailing the pros and cons of each. It also included this paragraph:

"The IGJA guide claims that 'the one word variant [videogame] is most commonly used in Europe and should be considered the preferred usage.' However, I have been unable to find support for either conclusion. Major British publications use 'videogame' more often than American publications, but most also use 'video game' more often than they use 'videogame.' This includes the Guardian, which seems to use 'videogame' in its online 'gamesblog' but 'video game' in its print versions. Their style guide has no entry for either 'videogame' or 'video game', and this undoubtedly contributes to the confusion. (Note that The Escapist also has a similar confusion.)"

The decision to use "video game" or "videogame" is an extremely important question for the character of any videogame publication. There's no inherent "rightness" to either one, but the term you choose does a lot to indicate what your stance to gaming and gamers is. Ultimately, I ended the same letter with:

"Speaking as a traditionalist, I would prefer 'video game,' hyphenation issues and all. However, the editorial spirit of The Gamer’s Quarter is a bit more adventurous in deviating from the mainstream. In that light, 'videogame' might be more appropriate. I can throw my weight behind either option."

The authors of this guide currently seem to hope to impose their personal tastes on not just larger edited publications, but upon bloggers, FAQ writers, and everyone who puts finger to key to talk about games. I hope that doesn't happen.

I don't see the need for an industry-wide video game journalism style guide either. Editors who are clueless enough to need one instead of developing a style guide of their own probably should not be editors. And writers should follow the style guide of the publication they write for. So where should the editor learn how to make the custom style guide for his/her publication? Newspapers and magazines have been around for a long time, and there are style guides aplenty. There's no need for a video game-specific guide. It sounds to me like someone is trying desperately to forcibly wedge themselves in as some sort of authority on video game journalism, which I will never recognize. I personally think there should be no distinction between "video game journalism" and everything else. There should just be "journalism." One should follow the same standards, ethics, and practices no matter what one is reporting on.

On another note, I personally use the term "video game," because I think that "videogame" is dumb. What kind of game is it? It's a "video" game. Is it a videogame game? As in, "Hey, let's go play some videogame games!" Awkward. I think that if you turn the phrase into one word -- videogame -- then you might as well call the whole medium something more fancy, like "digital interactive entertainment." What a mouthful. I think I'll just stick with "video game."

Incidentally, as I was driving home, I realized I forgot one of my main problems with how the guide has been presented in the past (and seems to be presented now).

Style guides are not meant to be standards. They're meant to be specific to a publication or an organization. AP Style is designed to save thin column space and stay intact when sent of the wire and to provide a neutral tone appropriate to many newspapers. The New York Times has a traditional style to emphasize its longevity as an organization, while the published "Wired Style" chose to be cutting-edge. (Of course, the current Wired style is unpublished, because the editorial staff drastically revised the guide a few years ago.)

So if some of my statements above seem contradictory, this is why. It'd be fine if the authors were making arbitrary choices for a specific publication, but there's no way those choices could be a "standard" "reference" for an entire community of writers and publications writing for different markets and different purposes.

Thanks for your comments, all. You make some good points and some valid criticisms, but I'd like to take a moment and address some of your specific concerns.

Firstly, Simon says that style guides are "old media, they're tremendously overformal, and they're not even interactive." He should be happy to know that we plan on offering the guide in an interactive wiki format shortly after publication, to allow users to discuss and comment on the guidelines we've set forth. Hopefully, these discussions will lead to regular revisions and updates of the guide that reflect the latest in common usage.

Secondly, both Simon and Tony seem to be under the misapprehension that we are setting ourselves up as a sort of game journalism police, setting down style rules from on high for the benefit of the stylistically ignorant peons below us. Nothing could be further from the truth. As I wrote near the end of the excerpted introduction that Simon linked, "This guide is by no means written in stone. This volume is, as the title implies, simply a suggested approach to navigating previously uncharted waters. No rule featured here is without exception, and we don't expect readers to agree with all our decisions."

As Tony correctly says, "Style is, inherently, decisions made between two valid choices. There's no right or wrong, there's just the one that you're going to go with." That's what we're doing with this guide -- making these decisions for the ones we want to go with. We felt that others, without as much time, energy or specific knowledge to devote to these decisions, might benefit from having an easily acessible reference to settle such matters when they came up. If a reader doesn't agree with our style, then they by no means have to use it -- each individual writer and publication will of course amend their own rules on top of ours -- but we at least hope our guide can provide a good starting point for writers and editors to think about these issues.

Tony further goes on to state that he's "hesitant to trust that the authors of this guide have done the appropriate homework" with regards to linguistic research necessary for a good style guide. Between us, David, Scott and I have decades of experience reading and writing about games that has informed our decisions. In creating the book, we've debated endlessly among ourselves and others many of these points, and consulted the chosen style of existing publications in trying to make our determinations. We don't claim this makes the decisions we've set forth in the guide inherently superior to anyone else's -- as Tony stated earlier, they are, in the end, merely judgement calls, and subject to individual taste -- but again, we feel the effort we've put into assembling this guide might be of some use to others who could use a handy reference on such matters.

I'd hope you all will reserve your final judgments on the guide's usefulness until the final product is available in a few weeks. I'm sure that there will be many specific points of contention, and I doubt anyone will agree with every choice we've made. Still, I hope you won't write off the whole idea of a guide prematurely simply because you feel we're trying to impose a set style on the game journalism world. We're only trying to help here...

IGN could surely use it.

IGN already has a style guide. It's called "How to Be Crappy."

I wouldn't mind peaking at Edge's.....

I think it's helpful to have a consistent resource for overarching style questions. Just because texts such as the MLA Handbook and the Chicago Manual of Style exist, they haven't stymied the creativity or quality of standout writing. Rather, they've served as helpful references for people who have questions about grammatical and stylistic standards. That's all. I don't think the point of a style manual is to impose doctrine on writing; I think it's to reflect how things are generally done and provide suggestions on how to write more effectively by keeping things consistent, with the goal being to ensure that the widest possible audience can easily digest your writing.

You know, Blawck, that's a really good answer that makes me like style guides a bit more.

[Drat, I thought I posted this yesterday. Sory for the delay:]

Kyle, you're overstating my position when you say that, "Simon and Tony seem to be under the misapprehension that we are setting ourselves up as a sort of game journalism police, setting down style rules from on high for the benefit of the stylistically ignorant peons below us." I can't speak for Simon, but my contention here is not that you've chosen a style, but that you're claiming that the style applies overbroadly.

Your comment did not address my second post (I suspect I may have posted it while you were composing your own). In it, I added that a big problem with the guide is that it does not seem keyed to a publication, but instead attempts to apply to the industry as a whole.

In the section of your introduction titled "A consistent style helps engender trust from readers, and, on a larger scale, lend legitimacy to our industry," you do imply that style is not something that needs to be applied within a specific publication, but one that needs to be conformed to across pubications. As I said before, different publications are supposed to be inconsistent between each other, using different terms, usages, and spellings. Doing so hasn't hurt any other industry, and claiming that it hurts this particular industry is irresponsible.

In the same section you say, "However you slice it, having an inconsistent style is embarrassing and detrimental to the cause of our beloved industry." David Thomas has said, "It's a matter of finally giving the industry the right tools it needs to get its message across." You're constantly applying this style to the industry, across publications.

Guides like AP Style or Chicago Style are, by the nature of style guides, prescriptive. They are so by claiming arbitrary choices in extremely limited settings. A reference that is not publication-specific has no right to choose presciptivism. A good dictionary withholds its judgment on how a word "should be" spelled, used, or pronounced. They only give information about how the evidence shows it usually is spelled, used, or pronounced.

From what I've seen of the guide in its previous form (the original wiki has been struck from the web, presumably in preparation of a newer one), it has tended strongly to prescriptivism. Having a prescriptive reference before a descriptive reference puts the cart far before the horse; and the way you're positioning your style guide as an "ultimate resource" for for the industry as a whole (caveats about mutability aside), you seem to be claiming a greater authority than is warranted.

I have no doubt that the guide will include much information that is useful, but my fear is that, based on the marketing and on what I've seen of the guide thus far, it will be claimed as an authority where it has none, by well-meaning writers and readers without a more proper reference.