SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, July 18. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The ‘Style Book of the Government of the Canary Islands’, published by the Presidency of the Government of the Canary Islands in 2021, was a finalist in the 2022 Archiletras de la Lengua Awards, delivered on July 14 at a ceremony that took place at the Casa de America, in Madrid.
152 candidates from different parts of the world were presented to the contest and the guide of the Canarian Executive was in the group of three finalists in the category of ‘Publication of the year’, corresponding to 2021, together with the Spanish-Arabic football dictionary and the podcast The words, which were raised ex aequo with the award.
The Archiletras de la Lengua Awards are convened by the Archiletras project (through the Prensa y Servicios de la Lengua publisher), promoted by the journalist Arsenio Escolar and whose most notable activity is the publication of the Archiletras magazine, a global and pan-Hispanic medium, printed and digital, whose content revolves around the knowledge of the Spanish language.
On behalf of the Government of Spain, José Manuel Albares, Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation; Félix Bolaños, Minister of the Presidency, Relations with the Courts and Democratic Memory; Joan Subirats, Minister of Universities; and Luis Planas, Minister of Agriculture.
Among the members of the jury, made up of thirteen people with a proven track record and professional reputation in the field of language and literature, were Arsenio Escolar, director of the Archiletras magazine; Inés Fernández-Ordóñez, member of the Royal Spanish Academy and Professor of Spanish Language at the Autonomous University of Madrid; Concepción Maldonado, professor of Language at the Faculty of Information Sciences of the Complutense University of Madrid and director of the Clave dictionary; Mar Abad, journalist, writer and editor; and Jaime Abello, CEO and co-founder of the Gabo Foundation.
Other winners in this contest were the linguist Álex Grijelmo in the disclosure category; actress Blanca Portillo as voice of the year; the Instituto Cervantes as institution of the year; and Brown University as University of the Year.
A GUIDE FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CANARY ISLANDS
The ‘Style Book of the Government of the Canary Islands’ is a reference guide on the proper use of Spanish addressed to all members of the regional Administration. The work has been written by Ramón Alemán, coordinator of the Lavadora de texto linguistic advisory service.
In this publication, special emphasis is placed on the defense, promotion and study of the Canarian variety as a vehicle for communication between the Government of the Canary Islands and society, a point that is contemplated in the Statute of Autonomy of the Canary Islands.
The style book, which begins with a presentation by the president of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, is divided into three parts. The first gives guidelines on general aspects of official communication, on the preparation of press releases, on the communication of the Government with society and on the treatment of sensitive matters, such as migration, sexist violence, the covid pandemic or the volcanic eruption on the island of La Palma. Likewise, issues related to communication through social networks and public events are addressed.
The second part is dedicated to spelling, grammar and the most frequent errors during the elaboration of texts; In addition, it contains a section with resources and reference sources, both on paper and on the Internet. The ‘Style Book of the Government of the Canary Islands’ concludes with a ‘Brief dictionary of doubts’ -a manual within the manual- in which the issues that usually cause the most problems among users of the language are addressed. This dictionary contains a selection of nearly four hundred canarismos, extracted from the Basic Dictionary of Canarismos, from the Academia Canaria de la Lengua, with recommendations and warnings about its use.
For the writing of the ‘Style Book of the Government of the Canary Islands’, the indications of normative works have been taken into account, such as the Dictionary of the Spanish language, the Spelling of the Spanish language and the New grammar of the Spanish language, of the Royal Spanish Academy and the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language; but some criteria of renowned linguists, such as Manuel Seco and José Martínez de Sousa, and of reference works, such as the Chicago-Deusto Style Manual, have also been adopted; the Dictionary of the use of Spanish, by María Moliner; and other academic works, such as the Glossary of Grammatical Terms, the Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Doubts and the Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Legal Spanish. Likewise, the style book follows some recommendations of the Style Manual of Radiotelevisión Canaria, prepared by Humberto Hernández, president of the Canarian Academy of Language.
