It’s official – We’re now using “esports,” not “eSports”

The debates which has been ongoing for a number of years on how to write the word “esports” has finally come to a close as the Associated Press concluded the debate on how the word should be written and classified. During a debate at the American Copy Editors Society yesterday, the Associated Press put it to bed, and we’re moving forward from here.

The AP editors: "Some decisions were easy. But 'esports' wasn't one of them." #ACES2017 pic.twitter.com/JFSYD2hSlo

— Mededitor (@Mededitor) March 24, 2017

@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

I was perhaps one of the biggest culprits of using “eSports” throughout my years of pretending to be a journalist, and it wasn’t until a saw a Tweet from a professional CS:GO analyst remarking “we don’t say eMail? Why do we say eSports?” This was a glass shattering moment for me and from that day I’ve tried to use the new “esports” in an effort to set the local trend. There are of course a few exceptions to the word. You can capitilize the “E” for “Esports” if it’s in a title or used as a proper noun, eg. Energy Esports, not Energy eSports (as it once was). That’s a slippery slope because esports is not a proper noun, but can be used as one. It’s a noun, so like email, we don’t capitalize the “E” unless as shown above.

The debate was concluded solely due to global trends and the word becoming more and more prevalent in main stream media, and pretty much all press around the world. The Associated Press Stylebook will be coming out on May 31st and in there will be esports alongside email as an unhyphenated word set for an up to date hip future of press.

This is final, now. I don’t want to see any eSports around on the Twitters and Facebooks, or you’ll be getting an angry eMail from me.

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Last Updated: March 27, 2017