You Don’t have to SCREAM about the PS3
Something I was meaning to talk about last week but got lost in the shuffle was a post on Kotaku revealing that the official, Sony-approved style for writing about their new system is “PLAYSTATION®3.” That’s right… all caps, no space, one registered trademark symbol…
I’ve touched on this problem in previous posts about Nintendo’s preferred styling for the Wii, but I never really got into my thoughts on the answer. The real question here is: Do we owe it to the companies we cover to refer to their systems and games in exactly the way they prescribe, no matter how stupid they are? After a lot of thought about the issue, I think my answer is: hell no!
The purpose of any style rule for a publication is to aid the reader in easy scanning and comprehension of what you write. That’s it. How the company wants to position its product in your readers mind doesn’t matter. Whether a company wants to protect its copyright doesn’t matter. Being consistent with what you see on the press release doesn’t matter. Having the reader understand what you are talking about, and presenting it in a self-consistent and clear manner, is all that matters.
With that in mind, I think writing out PLAYSTATION®3 is clearly not in the reader’s best interest. Putting one term in all caps in the middle of a sentence is quite JARRING and makes it seem like you’re SCREAMING. Which is probably what Sony intends (”Wow, the mentions of the PLAYSTATION®3 seem to just jump off the page here). But in an industry where readers will jump on any perceived sign of bias, do you really want to give readers an excuse to think you’re giving Sony’s system preferential treatment? Or would you rather put every system name in all capital letters? (I suppose the 32X is OK already…)
This reader-first guideline applies to all sorts of style questions. Is writing out “Driv3r” going to cause many readers to scratch their heads? Could putting two exclamation points after Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! going to make readers think the sentence has ended prematurely (or perhaps make them think you’re really enthusiastic!! about the game)? I would sya yes to both, but it’s really up to the editor to consider their audience and their best interests.
I’m not saying you should completely disregard a company’s desires when making style choices. I’m saying you should make a judgement call based on what will be clearest to the readers instead of automatically deferring to the company.
on August 15th, 2006 at 4:57 pm
On a similar note, you’ll never see Square-Enix refer to a title in a certain popular RPG franchise without using all-capital letters. Sure, I enjoy the games in question, but no normal human being outside of a PR department would actually write FINAL FANTASY XII every time. For me, this sort of behavior seems somewhat arrogant.
on August 15th, 2006 at 5:58 pm
If sony think I am going to write PLAYSTATION3 in every post then they are serriously mistaken, just like I will out 360 not Xbox 360.
on August 15th, 2006 at 6:51 pm
I tend to defer to Bill Walsh’s position:
&mdash”What’s in a nAME(cq)?“on August 16th, 2006 at 9:11 am
Hm… I think you’re conflating two things here: orthography and style. If my publication’s house style is to render console names as U+lc, omitting trademark symbols as implicit, then using “Playstation 3″ is correct. However, if the title of the game is Pirates!, then it is orthographically correct to render it as Pirates!.
on August 16th, 2006 at 10:39 am
Although I do not work in game newspaper, but rather in economic weekly, there have been several attempts to persuade us to use capital letters. The reason is quite simple: advertising. You simply cannot overlook the name that stands out on the page in capital letters. We have a simple rule, however: the only name that is used in all caps is when we refer to our own magazine:) The companies have a choice: either we write their names in normal way or we won’t mention them at all. All of them gladly accept the former option.
on August 21st, 2006 at 1:27 am
This isn’t a comment per se, but I noticed a typo in your post that I thought you might like to fix. In the sentence below you spell “say” as “sya”:
“I would sya yes to both, but it’s really up to the editor to consider their audience and their best interests.”
Anyway, keep up the good work and thanks for helping us all stay informed about this tiny corner of the world we call the game industry.
on September 3rd, 2006 at 12:26 am
Kudos to the Bill Walsh quote. I’d go with his advice.
I’m willing to give more leeway to titles of works (i.e., weird spellings in game titles, such as Driv3r) than to weird spellings of company names or brands (such as “PLAYSTATION®3″).