April 15, 2025

JTA Writing and Style Manual Update FY2024

The output of the Japan Tourism Agency FY2024 “Promoting Multilingual Support for Sightseeing Destinations around Japan” Project is now available on the JTA website (text in Japanese). 

Among the links provided are the JTA's resources for local sites producing English text for sightseeing locations is the 2024 edition of the Writing and Style Manual, which is available in English and Japanese. There is also a link to the JTA Sightseeing Database, which includes the 9,000-plus texts produced by the project between 2018 and 2023, with some improvements made for accessing information in the database. The database is searchable and a valuable reference for producing content about any of the sites funded by the Project to that date. 

The Writing and Style Manual is not much changed from FY2023, with the guidance about the writing style specified for Project texts presented as Part 2 of the Manual. Technical/copyediting points (romanization, capitalization, italicization, punctuation, etc.) are covered in Part 3. The Japanese edition is fully parallel with the English and may be useful when persuading clients to follow systematic rules for English text. The JTA Signage Project is continuing into its seventh year in 2025.