Tony Long, copy chief of Wired News, explains why the site is changing its style to lowercase the “I” in internet. Also, the Web is now the web and the Net is now the net, according to Wired News. “Wired News is placing this medium squarely where it belongs: on an equal footing with radio, television and Gutenberg’s wonderful innovation, moveable type.”
As a former copy chief myself, I’m not sure I agree. Capitalization also denotes a proper noun rather than a generic, common noun. (After all, it’s Mercury and Venus, not mercury and venus. It’s God, not god.) The Internet is not a medium like television or radio but a network of networks. The Web and the Net are very different things than any old spider web or safety net.
So, Wired News is welcome to its new style — Tony’s a pretty smart guy (we knocked back brews a couple of times in the old days) — and perhaps in a decade or two it will be the rule rather than the exception. But not here, not yet.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
How to spell Internet and Web
Effective with this sentence, Wired News will no longer capitalize the “I” in internet.
At the same time, Web becomes web and Net becomes net.
Why? The simple answer is because there is no earthly reason to capitalize any of these words. Actually…
JD, what about blog and weblog? I have seen it as Web log, Weblog, weblog, and blog but not Blog.
So true! This is the stuff that keeps copy gurus awake at night.
My take: there are millions of weblogs (common noun) but there’s only one Web (proper noun). But then, it’s been a looong time since Miss Ryff’s English class.
Got Grammar?
Question: how do you spell weblog? Should it be capitalized or not? Weigh in here.
I vote weblog (just like newspaper or magazine). To me, a single weblog carries the same weight as a single magazine. However, what I wonder is, what should the rule be on italicizing the name of a weblog since it’s customary to italicize the name of a print publication?
The rule on italicizing the name of a print publication actually varies from stylebook to stylebook.
In the Associated Press stylebook (used by almost all daily newspapers and many magazines), newspaper and magazine titles are *not* italicized.
Wow. All these years I’ve been italicizing and you’ve just blown my mind.
Wow, people that capitalise non-proper nouns deserve to be dragged into the streets and shot. I own a presentation company, and in the world of PowerPoint, superfluous capitalisation has reached epidemic proportions, the basic rule being if it isn’t and, or, of, or but – caps it.
Really, this is Getting a Bit Silly Now…!
Not sure I have a definite opinion on capitalising the start of the word – but please spare us from yet another capitalisation in the middle of a single word! When I see ‘WebLog’ I’ll get out my crucifix and garlic…