Capitalisation of the Internet
Posted on August 10th, 2007 by sherrilynne
Settle an argument for me? This week a tech journo ripped the mick out of me for using a capital letter ‘I’ on Internet. I always have. Apparently Wired says lower case. But Matthew Stibbe, writer in chief at Articulate Marketing says that Microsoft uses upper case.
I am throwing the question out to the blogosphere. Which do you use?
Filed under: public relations
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I use the capital “I”. I’m not really sure why… I guess I could make up a whole rant about the Internet being the name for a concept, but to me ‘internet’ just doesn’t look right.
I should probably add that I’m german and we capitalize all our nouns…
A very brusk American boss/editor always insisted that the Internet was a noun and a type of place and therefore should be capitalized.
I capitalize TV (for television) too.
My friend who writes a humorous, if not, snide reading blog writes Tee Vee (italicized) to make her point clear.
Comments?
Dictionary.com cites the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing which provides the following definition:
Internet networking
(Note: capital “I”). The Internet is the largest internet (with a small “i”) in the world. It is a three level hierarchy composed of backbone networks, mid-level networks, and stub networks. These include commercial (.com or .co), university (.ac or .edu) and other research networks (.org, .net) and military (.mil) networks and span many different physical networks around the world with various protocols, chiefly the Internet Protocol.
(I’m not a regular user of the terms backbone, mid-level and stub in this context, but I’ve always referred to the big network on the World Wide Web as Internet with a capital I. Stick to your guns - tech journos don’t know everything!)
Always capitalised, no debate on that one!
Internet .. Internet .. Internet
I use lower-case unless a client insists on upper-case. While it is true that the “Internet” is one example of an “internet” and while it has some attributes of a place, I just don’t think it justifies capitalisation any more. Other words in this category include outer space, the atmosphere, abroad, network, the ether, imagination. I don’t like capital letters - the slow people down - and I try to avoid them unless they are absolutely necessary. TV is capitalised because it is an abbreviation. It’s not a precedent for capitalising ‘internet’. And it’s evident, despite what Owen says, that there is some debate on this subject.
Oh no! I’ve just become a grammar bore!
When you use a capital letter you refer to the definitive article. The Internet is a proper noun and refers the an internet that is far more famous than any other and runs the World Wide Web (for example). If my network and your network start to network we have created an internet but if my network connects to the Internet I use a capital “I” to show that I am referring tot he definitive article (which I’ve already said). If you want to be technical you could talk about “the international publicly accessible internet of TCP/IP nodes running the ICANN DNS root system for public information and host of the W3.” But frankly that is too much of a mouthful and that level of clarification is not needed.
My vote is for Internet, based mainly on generally established usage; which usage is rationally based on the mathematical truth that there is only ONE Internet (the one everyone connects to). Technically this may properly include many subnets (”little internets”), and there can also be disconnected or private “internets” (= any network comprised of IP hosts). As well justified by Pete Wilby and Lord Matt above.
Thank you all for taking part in the debate. I wonder if said journo has had a look.