The Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (yes, the AWB) spells the name of its erstwhile head in all its accented glory, Eugène Terre’Blanche, but online news sites across the world have at least two other spellings of the infamous AWB leader’s name.
South Africa’s Mail & Guardian Online (www.mg.co.za) spells it as Eugene Terre’Blanche, along with News24 (www.news24.com) and Independent Online (www.iol.co.za).
However, the Times Online (www.thetimes.co.za) spells his name without the second accent, so Eugene Terre Blanche, but in at least one instance it is spelt Eugene Terreblanche.
The BBC News website (http://news.bbc.co.uk/) opts for Eugene Terreblanche as well, while the highly esteemed New York Times (www.nytimes.com) has the surname spelt as Terreblanche, Terre’Blanche, TerreBlanche and Terre’blanche.
It’s probably safe to say that the AWB employs the most correct spelling of Mr Terre’Blanche’s name. One wonders why the news sites mentioned are applying the spelling of the name schizophrenically. Is it because they just don’t know, or aren’t paying attention? Or is there something else at work? Are they perhaps counting on surfers interested in Mr Terre’Blanche’s story not really knowing how to spell his name, so aiming for a number of spellings to exist online, to draw the widest search engine traffic possible? Now there’s a conspiracy theory to rival the ones doing the rounds about his mysterious death.
The question remains of course, for online sub-editors who have to take search engine optimisation (SEO) into account when subbing articles: whether to stick to proper accents and spellings, and hope Google still directs that traffic to their sites, or to use a number of versions of the same spelling to draw as much traffic as possible. How, then, do sub-editors maintain consistency, or is variable spelling going to be the SEO norm?