Keelestiilikorraldus eesti ajalehtedes
Linguostylistic Planning in Estonian Newspapers

Summary/Abstract: The paper discusses style planning and the the development of linguostylistic rules for Estonian newspapers of 1998–2005. The study is based on four questionnaires to editors. In 1998 a formal questionnaire was applied to nineteen daily and weekly papers, while in 2003 five national dailies and weeklies and one regional paper were studied, and in 2005 twelve dailies and weeklies were involved, supplemented later by two more national and one local paper. The reason why the study of 2003 was focused mainly on national papers lay in the results of 1998, which revealed that the local Estonian papers did not intend to establish their own linguostylistic rules, preferring rather to go by those of national papers. In 2005, however, interest in local press was resumed, trying to find out what (if any) examples have been followed and to what extent (if at all) linguistic editing is rendered important in local papers. As a result, it was revealed that in Estonian newspapers the principles of editing are still in a development phase, even though the recent years have brought significant qualitative changes. As for style regulation, different practices are followed, but in general it receives much more attention than in 1998. However, most of the papers still do not follow any written regulations, let alone a style book. In comparison with the Soviet period the linguistic editing of Estonian newspapers has faced a setback. One could do with more awareness of the positive effect that a usage standard and good linguistic editing might have, even from the commercial point of view.

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