Knowing how to spell esports has become a good skill to have. The rise of the video game medium, along with the introduction of competitive play, has forced it into the public eye. Call of Duty, Fortnite, and other games aren’t just games anymore; they’re sports with competitions, winners, and money.
It’s not as simple as sticking an “e” in front of sports, though. Esports, e-sports, esports, and eSports have all been used at times, but which one is the correct spelling and format?
The correct way to spell the word is “esports.” Despite there being a lot of debate over the correct spelling, grammar, and capitalization of esports, in 2017, the Associated Press put an end to the questioning at the American Copy Editors Society Convention. For their style guide, which reigns supreme in the world of journalism, “esports” is correct.
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This is because of their research in Google Trends, which revealed that people search for the term without hyphens or capital letters, although it’s worth mentioning that people do that for everything. There’s rarely an apostrophe, capital, hyphen, or anything in a Google search for any topic.
It was not always this way. According to Sport Digest, the first use of the term was in 1999, and it was spelt “eSports.” It was likened to email, which used to be spelt “e-mail” before the hyphen was dropped in modern grammar.
There is still some debate over the capitalization of the word. Sport Digest also reported that news agencies aren’t consistent across the board, sometimes capitalizing it “Esports” or even “eSports.” Nowhere is the hyphen present, though.
Dominic Sacco, for British Esports, echoed Sport Digest’s take on it, saying that odd capitalization and hyphenation make no sense with this word. The word is as straightforward as it should be, with recent decisions helping remove the odd origins of the word’s spelling.
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When things are made singular, the spelling can change. The English language has all sorts of weird intricacies like that, and when words are invented or popularized, as esports has been lately, it can be difficult to know exactly what the right spelling and grammar should be. It’s one of the things that makes learning the language a challenging endeavor.
It is widely accepted, and claimed by the AP, that “esports” is correct. But what if it’s a single game? One wouldn’t call Fortnite or Valorant an esports because that’s poor grammar. Would one call it esport or e-sport?
There’s very little guidance on this, from the AP or any other source. However, since we know that most of the world does not capitalize or hyphen the plural version, we can safely apply those same rules to the singular version.
You would say, “League of Legends is an esport,” rather than “League of Legends is an e-sport.” The same logic, which is that the hyphen and capital letters in the middle of the word are a strange way to go about it, applies here.
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