We’re not Grammar Nazis here. But many find themselves having trouble capitalizing and hyphenating some online words correctly. According to a report from the Reuters news agency, about 16,000 words have given in to the strains of the online world and ended up losing their hyphens in a revised edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.
The words “fig leaf,” “ice cream,” “hobby horse,” “pin money,” “test tube,” “pot belly,” and “water bed” all used to be two-word compounds lost their hyphens.
Also, the hyphens between the phrases “chickpea,” “bumblebee,” “crybaby,” “touchline,” “leapfrog,” “logjam,” “lowlife,” “pigeonhole,” and “waterborne” have been removed, and they’re fused as one word. Still, something’s wrong. This enemy follows us around like a thief in the night, and we’re not alone—online merchants, marketing people, and even Wikipedia have battled this wily foe.
But it’s enough already. It’s time to resolve the issue once and for all. To get over our pride and finally find out: What is the right way to spell “esports”?
The Many Different Ways to Spell “esports”
Everyone is familiar with esports. We enjoy a multiplayer video game generally played in a competitive setting by professional players. So, why is it that we can’t spell it right?
A quick Google search for esports (or eSports, or e-sports) yields a bewildering assortment of results that generate more questions than answers. These are just some of the many versions we discovered on the first page:
- Esports
- eSports
- E-sports
- esports
- EsPoRtS
- e-sports
There are six different ways to spell esports. How come we have self-driving cars and men on the moon and can’t decide whether to capitalize an e, add a hyphen, or use a charming lowercase e?
As someone who has done our fair share of antics with the word, one question persists:
Why Is There So Much Confusion?
Did you know that the Google keyboard automatically spelled “esports” as “eSports”? Does it imply that you should spell esports “eSports”? If so, why does a r/esports subreddit bot shout at you if you type “esports” in any other way? (Sheesh, why does it have to be so rude?)
How can one be right or wrong when spelling, particularly for newly learned English words?
Languages develop at a considerably slower rate than computers. As a result of the communication revolution brought about by this new technology, previously written as two different words, multiword phrases like “on line” and “off line” are now hyphenated or presented as one term.
The scapegoat?—email. The email has been spelled “email” for the last 30 years, although it took several different spellings to get there. In the same way that email is short for “electronic mail,” esports is short for “electronic sports.” It seems reasonable that they would have the same growing pains because they are both phrases representing digital evolutions of previously used concepts.
Computer jargon is up for debate. And to further confuse things, British spelling is often different from that used in the United States and Canada. However, just because a language is in flux doesn’t imply that it can be written in any way. Rules exist, even when they’re often administered with a lighthearted, playful attitude.
After all, with the gaming industry producing $90.3 billion in yearly economic production in 2019, supporting almost 429,000 jobs in the US, esports does deserve its moniker—and its definitive spelling.
What’s The Difference Between A Hyphen, An en-dash, And An em—dash?
A hyphen (-), an en dash (-), and an em dash (—) are three different punctuation marks. The length is the most noticeable difference, but we’ll talk more about these lines, which are one of the most appealing aspects of grammar.
What Is A Hyphen?
A hyphen is a punctuation mark that connects two words or word segments. However, remember that the hyphen is not a universal punctuation mark that may take the place of other dashes.
Example: a dog-friendly store
I’m a book-loving student
closed-door meetings
Generally speaking, a dash is used to denote a range or pause since it is longer than a hyphen. En dashes (-) and em dashes (—) are the two most often used dash kinds.
What Is An en-dash?
En-dashes, which are sometimes mistaken for hyphens and are roughly the width of an upper-case N. En-dashes, however, often serve as a form of a super hyphen. For the most part, the en dash is often used to indicate dates and numerical ranges. Aside from that, you can use an en-dash to create intricate compound adjectives to help the reader understand what is being said.
Example: Elvis Presley–style dance moves
pre–World War II buildings
I’ll schedule you from 4:30–5:00
What Is An em—dash?
Compared to the hyphen and the en-dash, which are both considered more technical punctuation marks, the em—dash, which has a width about equivalent to that of a capital M, is regarded as a more aesthetic punctuation symbol. An em—dash is often used to denote a pause in a statement. It is more powerful than a comma but less powerful than a semicolon or a period.
Example:
The healthcare professional—dressed in the same purple scrubs as the doctor— came into the room with a bowl of Jello.
I opened the cabinet, and there it was—the long-lost pin I was looking for.
“Wait! did I mention—” Then the door slammed shut between us, and I couldn’t hear what she was saying.
What Are The Consequences Of Spelling The Words Wrong?
Whether you spell Esports, eSports, e-sports, esports, or EsPoRtS, the casual reader will undoubtedly understand what you are talking about. But according to EsportsHeadlines.com and their take on „how to spell esports“, the issue may not always be with human readers.
The article “Spelling Correction In The Pubmed Search Engine,” published by the National Library of Medicine, says that retrying a search that was initially unsuccessful occurs 77% of the time on the same website.
It is a good idea to have a consistent spelling of a term so that anybody searching for the said word in databases (or on the internet) can easily find what they need. E-sports and e-sports are the same term and mean the same thing, but some search engines are not sophisticated enough to recognize this. Thus they would return you two completely different results pages depending on how you spelled it.
Even though it may not seem like it, hyphens and capitalization can make a huge difference in how your search results turn out.
That is, of course, apart from the stylistic problem (it wouldn’t look great to have one popular website spell it one way while its rival spells it another). To avoid misunderstanding and make it possible to find all esports-related material in one location, it is ideal to have a single, standardized spelling of the term.
Who Are the Entities That Govern What We Write or Say?
Harvard Business Review says that one in four people, that is 1.75 billion people, on the planet speak and write English at a functional level, making it the fastest-spreading language in human history. The spread, though, fruition into spelling variations.
We’ve seen esports, e-sports, eSports, Esports, and that snarky League of Legends player constantly using the esports word. How can we tell if we’ve got the correct spelling if the word has several variations? As it turns out, there are those who determine the appropriate and inappropriate English language use.
American Publication Society’s Style Guide
According to the American Publication Society’s style guide, the correct way to write esports is “esports”—lowercase, no hyphens. Esports cannot be hyphenated in American writing, and the letter E must be capitalized only if used at the beginning of a sentence.
As much as we’d want this to be a once-and-done problem, the impact on the community is still evident. Many are still using “e-sports,” businesses are still using the incorrect spelling, and online platforms are still auto-correcting when you misspelled the word.
How Is Esports Written in Different Countries?
The American Publication Society’s style guide is not an organization that governs English internationally. In actuality, there are distinctions between American English and British English, and sometimes even Canadian English (“analyse” vs. “analyze,” “behavior” vs. “behaviour”). How “esports” is spelled in other languages is still a head-scratcher.
UK And Canada
Canadians use the term “esports” in a way identical to Americans. The same is true for British English, albeit “esport” is often used online. Thanks to the help of well-known UK organizations like the British Esports Association, esports is increasingly referred to as “esports”—with the s—rather than “esport”.
Brazil And Portuguese-speaking Countries
The difficulty arises when people use Latin-based terms from other languages. The Portuguese word for sports is a prime illustration of this. Remarkably similar to “esports,” the word is “esporte.” In this case, writing “esport” following the AP Style Guide is problematic since the internet may loosely translate it into the Portuguese term for sports because they need to distinguish it.
Brazilian and Portuguese speakers all often use the term “e-sports” hyphenated. That doesn’t preclude the Portuguese from adopting “esports” as it gains popularity in nations like Brazil. Still, until that point, you can anticipate them using a hyphen while chatting.
Germans
For a while, the German Wikipedia officially referred to the term as “e-Sports” to make it the world’s standard written style. But since then, the term has been referred to as “esports” in Germany and by its esports organizations. Consider the well-known German esports squad Unicorns of Love. They keep using the term “esports” to describe esports.
How To Spell esports: The Final Verdict
Case closed. There are a few lingering issues—but “esports” is the way to go.
Esports is here to stay. It’s past time we stopped seeing esports as second-class frolicking because the global esports industry is predicted to reach $3,574.9 million by 2027. If we follow the example established by email, esports needs more than a tacked-on ‘e.’ Moreover, it should be liberated from this uppercase, capitalization, and hyphenation horror. We should give it a neater, more expert, and consistent form. Above all, it should be spelled correctly, and “esports” is the correct spelling.