Slashdot Mirror
It's Just the 'internet' Now?
This morning Wired News announced that 'web', 'net', and 'internet' will no longer be capitalized in their stories. Is this the next logical step after ditching 'e-mail' in favor of 'email' , or should the global computer network still be treated with a proper name? For more discussion, see Wikipedia, The Chicago Manual, and an article profiling Joseph Turow's de-capitalization efforts.
Why? The simple answer is because there is no earthly reason to capitalize any of these words. Actually, there never was.
:)
Well there was never any reason to capitalize "net" for the simple fact that it is really 'net which is a shortened version of "Internet". I consider the Internet a specific place and thus deserving of capitalization.
If It's Capitalized, It Must Be Important.
There are a lot of things that are important that aren't capitalized. Take for example "air" and "water". Most people don't capitalize either one of those. I suppose there may be some groups out there like "wateries" or "airheads" that may refute my claims but they can write their own damn non-sense. I'd prefer they save it for 4/1/2005 though.
That it transformed human communication is beyond dispute. But no more so than moveable type did in its day. Or the radio. Or television.
Small nitpick here... If you are talking about "the radio" instead of radio there is a slight difference. Radio is talking about the medium where "the radio" is talking about the big box over in the corner of the living room that talks.
I will continue to refer to it as "Internet" as it is my all knowing God. Maybe that's why Google is capitalized?
people stop writing WEB when it's not an acronym or abbreviation.
Does it really matter?
Does the capitalization improve or impede understanding in any way?
English is a fluid language, constantly changing and slightly different everywhere.
It has different spelling pronounciation and accents everywhere. Despite the best hopes of the wannabe language police, english has and will continue to change.
I see the Internet as a place, like Amsterdam or Mars.
A proper name of place is capitalized, hence i capitalize the Internet accordingly.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
and stop calling them "sights" unless they're tourist attractions to be looked at and photographed.
(a) Nobody cares. Nobody, most of all Wired (which tries to coin terms and screw with the language unsuccessfully on a very frequent basis) has the ability to just decree that everyone is going to change capitalization or spelling of a word. The includes dictionaries -- they just codify common usage.
(b) Insofar as there is a correct way of doing things, "Internet" should be capitalized. We use "the Internet". It is a proper noun (which, surprise surprise, should be capitalized) that refers to something quite different from "an internet" -- I can build "an internet" running IPX attaching a couple of networks, but "the Internet" runs IP and is a rather large entity that currently spans the world.
(c) I hate journalists that try to leave their mark on the world by affecting the language.
(d) Tell you what. I think that there's "no reason to capitalize 'Wired'" -- after all, there's another term, "wired", which exists, and surely we should just merge the two. So from now on, "Wired" can be referred to as "wired". Of course, the newly-redubbed "wired" people will probably take issue with this, as it's confusing and doesn't gain anything, and violates English rules, but I want to get my name out there on etymologies for mucking with a word. It's "wired" now. Oh, and "Tony Long", the editor pushing this? He can be "tony long", or just "long" for short.
May we never see th
We still capitalize the Earth, Atlantic Ocean, and McDonalds. Just because something's world-known and basically ubiquitous doesn't keep it from being a proper noun.
~D
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
I thought the point was that my 192.168.1.0/24 behind my linksys access point is "an internet". The 66.35.250.0/24 slashdot is on is "an internet" (unlike mine, a publicly routeable one). An internet is any network that uses, surprise surprise, the "internet protocol".
What you are talking about is an intranet, not an internet. The Internet is the connection of multiple networks to each other. It is a network of networks, thus it sits between other networks and earns the inter- prefix. Intra- means within one's own logical grouping. A corporate network, Slashdot's server farms, and your person home network are intranets because they are a network of machines within one logical organization.
This is why there can be only one Internet unless you make a completely separate other network between networks that doesn't talk to the first one at all. That's very unlikely to happen until we start building colonies on other worlds, and we'll probably have slow, laggy connections between them even then. I see no reason to decapitalize the Internet since there can be only one. (No Highlander jokes, please.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
"The Internet" is the NAME of a single computer network. There are other networks with names, like Fidonet, Bitnet, Arpanet, etc, but most of them are not around anymore. Saying that it is no more a proper noun than car, refrigerator, or restaurant is simply wrong.
If you had named your fridge "Old Whiny", your car "Betty", and your restaurant was named "The E-Coli Farm" it WOULD be correct to say:
"Old Whiny is broken and the food is bad, so let's jump in Betty and go to The E-Coli Farm." (I skipped the food because few people name individual items of food.)
That the The Internet happens to be a name in definite form does not make it any less of a name, just like The Netherlands is still the name of a country, and The Rocky Mountains is still the name of a mountain chain. (Note that "a rocky mountain" is something entirely different - just like "an internet.")
Capitalization of proper nouns exists to increase comprehension. The Internet was named that way because it was unique. There were, agreed, many inter-networks, but the Internet was the "mother of all internets" as it aimed to connect them all into one global inter-network.
Corporations have intranets, but they may also have inter-networks with various vendors and customers -- these may not always be part of the Internet. So, as long as it is possible to have an internet that is not the Internet, the proper version should be capitalized.
Wired is merely hoping to be ahead of the curve in suggesting that it won't be long before all internets are part of the Internet -- and then it won't matter if the term is capitalized at all.
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower