Sometimes I can be a word nerd, and so it pleased me to no end when in April, I saw that the Associated Press changed its foreverknown guideline of Web site to website. This small change made my life so much easier

when dealing with clients who always thought capitalizing and separating the word Web was a mistake when referring to website. It's the little things, I know.

This month, the Associated Press released 41 additional guidelines in the 2010 Stylebook directly pertaining to social media. The Social Media Guidelines section covers such topics as when to combine or separate words such as smart phone, which words are considered both nouns and verbs, and common texting acronyms.

The Stylebook discusses guidelines that pertain heavily to social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Words such as friend, fan and follow are now classified as both nouns and verbs. Other entries new to the 2010 Stylebook include blogs, click-throughs, app, unfriend (defriend is also acceptable, though less common, according to AP), RSS, widget, wiki, trending and metadata.

The new Social Media Guidelines section also includes information and policies on using social media tools. The guide gives examples of how journalists can use these tools for work. The section also spends time outlining how important it is for journalists to continue to check sources and how to do so from information they find on blogs, tweets or other social platforms.

If you're interested in figuring out common texting acronyms (my kids aren't old enough for me to be in the know yet, but apparently POS is now official for "Parent Over Shoulder"), the Stylebook outlines those as well.

Two items that remain the same in the new Stylebook edition:

•  Capitalizing Web when used as a shortened version of World Wide Web. Web is considered a proper noun in this instance

•  Hyphenating words such as e-mail, e-book, e-reader and A-list

Writers can also purchase the AP Stylebook app for iPhone. Though not new, the app does have searchable listings for Stylebook sections with the ability to customize entries.

Much of this new Stylebook edition was gathered from user surveys and common use of social media words and acronyms. Nothing extremely surprising, but for us word nerds, it's nice to have a set of standards nonetheless.

Melissa Harrison is principal and creative director at Allée in Albertville. She may be reached at melissa@alleecreative.com