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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.
... we should decapitalize "Google".
And this is News? err sorry. news
Can we please make that one word, like most of those who actually build them do?
I've been really annoyed by things like MS-Word that would always automatically capitalize the "i" in "internet". I never found a reason to capitalize works like internet, web, etc. unless grammar demanded it (like starting a sentence). The question now is, how long is it going to take the rest of the world to catch on.
the intarweb should still be treated with teh proper name
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
wired is stealing my thunder. i started this trend when my shift key broke. curse you wired.
damn shift key, i can't use the exclamation point to emphasize my rage.
www.google.com
It doesn't bother me either way, captialized or not, but I think the comparision to television and phonograph isn't quite correct at this point. As of right now, we only have one Internet, hence referring to it as "the Internet", whereas there are many televisions, etc. To me the captialization comes more from using it like a proper name more than like a brand name. Somewhere down the road maybe there will be many networks called internets and it would make more sense to use it just as a normal noun.
Or we could just not worry about it and get to work on the more pressing problems... should Microsoft be spelled with a $?
Hopefully we can drop /. now and instead hold down the SHIFT and all surf over to ?>
John.
It's like the ocean. The ocean is big, powerful, and impressive, and we owe our existence to it, but even still, we don't call it the Ocean, merely the ocean.
I think the internet is the same way.
it's going to evolve again eventually, because only the coolest net users control the vernacular:
...the list goes on. use your imagination!
intarweb: what we now know as the internet
intarchat: instant messaging or IRC
intarmail: e-mail
intarcash: any paypal-like system
eh hem...
"The internet is a communications tool used the world over where people can come together to bitch about movies and share pornography with one another."
Great movie.
"Stuff that matters", folks!
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
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?
lowercase makes one handed typing easier
sulli
RTFJ.
at least the names are staying the same. there are places in the world... well ok france,..where they have renamed words in an attempt to stop encroachment of english into their language. like referring to email as 'courrier electronique'. my own lack of capitalization today is a tribute to ee cummings however.
All of it (email, web, IM) has been "the intarweb" to most non-techie folks for some time.
Americans have always been particularly atrocious at picking correct case. Maybe it should be iNteRnEt. I suppose, we should just make everything uppercase and be done with it. It would save 26 characters out of the ASCII set we could use for emoticons!
people stop writing WEB when it's not an acronym or abbreviation.
I suppose people using "/." have been doing this all along, else it would be "?."
=Smidge=
nobody even bothers with capitalizaton on the net. even when starting new setences. down with capitals down with accents and down with puncutation!!!!shit11111
*shudders*
Okay, maybe it's not that bad, but it's about time Internet became internet.
There never was a reason to capitalize "Internet"?!
Or perhaps Wired News simply don't know what they're talking about?
The "internet" is any set of networks connected with routers. The "Internet" is the largest such network, that uses TCP/IP.
From FOLDOC:
Internet
internet
I am a genius; therefore, you suck.
I think the constant use of the definite article "The" hooked most people into the capital "I". It's The Internet. There are not multiple internets (secure military and financial nets notwithstanding), there is only The Internet. There is no internet but THE Internet and Wired magazine is probably not its prophet, though I'm sure they like to think they are.
Probably has a lot to do with non-tech people not understanding the difference between a WAN and a LAN, and just referring to everything as an "internet".
Think I need to cut back on my coffee consumption.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Based on observed trends, it seems to be a good move. As a manager, I rely on my team to give me direction on technological improvements. Decapitalization of key words is consistent with the observed behaviors 'in the wild'. For example, I recently received the following emails that suggest Wired's decision is accurate:
'im working on something alredy, so go stuff yourself and get back to browsing the internet'
'Hey ass, next time you can't get to your stupid Sims board, check whether your network cable is even plugged in before telling everyone that "the internet is down"'
'Jeesus, Ben, stop sending me that gd Bonzai Buddy trash! I don't care if it's cute, that little bastard screwed up my internet settings! I lost a weeks worth of work!'
If my team uses that type of capitalization, then I know it's just a matter of time before it catches on.
Regards,
PHB
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..
The Web is the World Wide Web. The web is what the spider lives in. The Net is the global TCP/IP network. The net is what the fish are caught in.
I find it amusing that uber hype-mongers Wired (sorry "wired") claim that there was never any need to capitalize, they probably are responsible for it in the first place...
Something that's on the Web can be said to be web-based.
However, I don't think the same works for "Internet." Especially since there's something called "Internet 2."
As far as 'net' goes, if you're talking about "on the Net" you'd capitalize on whether it's your LAN, or on the Internet.
But I do have one question.. Is it now TCP/ip?
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
The internet will continue to be a victim of capitalism.
The reason we capitalise 'Internet' is so that we can distinguish between it and mere 'internets'. 'Internet', with a lower case 'i', refers to any set of interconnected networks. Whereas 'Internet', with a capital 'i' refers to "the specific, worldwide internet that is widely used to connect universities, government offices, companies and [...] private individuals". That quotation incidentally comes from Tanenbaum's textbook, "Computer Networks" (3rd edition, page 16) where he made the exact same distinction that I have just made.
It's always been capitalised and always will be AFIAC.
A lot of people joke around about this, but the truth of the matter is that he never claimed that he "invented it," only that he secured funding for it. This funding was instrumental in its creation. Really, this whole joke is just another example of a witty Republican smear that has no basis in fact.
o re _internet/index.html
http://dir.salon.com/tech/col/rose/2000/10/05/g
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
The AP Stylebook says that Internet should be capitalized and it's still e-mail instead of email and they still make use of 3 character state codes instead of the newer 2 character postal ones. That book is the gold standard and anyone publishing should be following it.
Capitalization depends on whether the word is being used as proper noun or adjective. Adj. This internet connection is awesome. Noun. This connection to the Internet is awesome.
(Speaking as a Wikipedia admin) - god, oh god, why did you link to the *TALK* page and not the article? Sigh...
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Another one that always bothered me..."worldwide" is one word. So it should be Worldwide Web...as in ww.slashdot.org and not www.
Can't you people see that it's a Capitonym
RTFW (read the fscking Wiki)
© 2004 The SCO Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
I'll never understand why this pathetic lameness is still considered funny for so long after the Republicans started exaggerating what Gore actually said. Is it some sort of self-mocking humor by the people dumb enough to repeat it?
Who cares? If people devoted this much time and energy into other (more useful) things we might have been able to cure cancer by now. Or who knows what else.
i cant seem to come up with a sig.
cummings
would
be
proud
bp
I almost NEVER proper-case microsoft (lower-casing/deprecation intentional). Sometimes, to get around honoring uppercasing for ms, I just use the initial msie, ms excel, NT4.0, win XP or W2K SP#... This way, it looks like a minor omission.
Hmm, I guess ms will try to use meta tags and other technology to "clean up" documents, especially those that have "microsoft" (lower-casing/deprecation intentional) in them. Or, didn't they try that, only to be blasted for over-reaching into peoples' documents?
When will we get people to correctly use:
-"log on" as a verb and "logon" as the noun?
-"insecure" for emotional states of mind
-"non-secure" regarding the nature of the Internet. The Internet cannot be "insecure", since it is not a sentient/organic/thinking thing.
When I was aboardship/aboard ship, and was Petty Officer of the Watch, I/we answered the landline/land line as "Quarterdeck, USS Flint. Petty Officer Syes Speaking. This is a non-secure line; how may I help you sir, or ma'am?"
Phone lines are never insecure, so why the Internet? I think it was because a bunch of marketers took over the security message aspect of the Internet. Or, some engineers who are FANTASTIC programmers just happened to select the wrong word from the dictionary and it "stuck".
Even "unsecure" might seem better that "insecure".
=========
Hmmm... I just ran a "dictionary.com" search on "insecure" and got these:
1. Not sure or certain; doubtful: unemployed and facing an insecure future.
2. Inadequately guarded or protected; unsafe: A shortage of military police made the air base insecure.
3. Not firm or fixed; unsteady: an insecure foothold.
4. Lacking stability; troubled: an insecure relationship.
5. Lacking self-confidence; plagued by anxiety: had always felt insecure at parties.
========
Well, to me, number 2 sounds stupid, as if someone POST-COLDWAR got caught up in the "insecure Internet" description thing.
I guess I'll have to go to pre-Internet boom dictionaries to find out if "insecure" back then was described as in item #2 above...
David Syes
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
With most of the words in question, I don't see the point in having the first letter capitalized, such as email, web, net (wich is slang for Internet), but with Internet vs. internet, I thought there was a difference between the 2, where internet refers an "inter-network (a link between networks which has not been tied to The Internet), and Internet refers to the "net".
Correctimundo, my friend. I was wondering why nobody made this point: any routed network using the Internet Protocol is an internet. The first private or restricted internets like MILnet were around long before the publicly-facing portion of the ARPAnet expanded into the Internet.
Wikipedia has a good write-up at the top of its entry for Internet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet
and I appreciate the manner in which it addresses the "popular parlance" for "internet" in terms of the commonly used services on the Internet, e.g. "A system running internet services." (my example, based on Wikipedia's narrative).
There is also a good discussion of Capitonyms:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitonym
I think Wikipedia got it right.
Just because something becomes far too omnipresent for the public now, it doesn't make sense that we decapitalize it. I can guess the "-" in email was always a source of little confusion and also took those extra milliseconds of your typing. But making Web web is nothing very intelligent.
Like that, we must decapitalize Microsoft bcoz 100s of millions of ppl use its OS (and many others use pirated versions). Or make Linus, linus, due to his sheer popularity.
Noun is Noun.
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".
The largest internet, the one consisiting of all publicly routeable internets, was (until today at least) called "the Internet". Like most proper nounse, it is (was) capitalized.
All's true that is mistrusted
(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 are not talking about informal bs'ing or the fact that people pronounce things differently. We are talking about a proper place, ie the Internet. Between friends, in a chatroom, here etc, I don't see a problem with calling it the "internet" or "net" for short. We all do. But any half decent publishing house or reporter with any respect for formality or actual literary standards will continue to call it the Internet.
"Despite the best hopes of the wannabe language police, english has and will continue to change."
I don't think anyone is against the English language gaining new slang words or expressions. But in formal settings like publications proper language conventions should be followed.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Me = democrat = likes Gore + capable of making a joke next time I will put the smiley face so it is obvious...
Why would you look to Wired for questions about language? That's what dictionaries are for! If you want to know if a word should be capitalized or not, look to a dictionary like OED or Merriam-Webster. Incidentally, Merriam-Webster lists internet with a capital "I."
-Rich
It looks like it's about time for me to revive my early 90's plan of rebranding the word "internet".
I propose that, in honor of Doctor Norbert Wiener, inventer of the term 'cybernetics', and the 'cyber-' prefix in larger use, we should refer to the internet as 'Wienerspace' from now on.
Try it!
'I logged onto the Wienerspace last night, and looked at my favorite web sites!'
Okay, so now that 'internet' is not capitalized, can we work on educating people to stop asking 'what version of the internet are you using?'
---
Those who can, do
Those who can't, teach
Those who don't know how, supervise
Alright punks - the reason I posted the link is so someone MIGHT read the damned thing. I meant it as a joke, but people want to make it personal now. Let me give a quote I am accused of not having:
"The one thing that sustained him? 'The thought that some day I would come home and invent the Internet.'"
Goes on...
" 'I was pretty tired when I made that comment because I had been up very late the night before inventing the camcorder,' Gore told the Democratic National Committee on Saturday."
He admitted to it in front of the fucking DNC so do I still not have a source?
The internet was never a brand name, thus, there was no need to capitalize it.
Capitalization is determined by whether or not something is a proper noun, not by whether it is a brand name. The Internet is a proper noun, as opposed to "the internet", which would refer to, say, one's private corporate internet.
If you'd like other examples: nobody owns the "Pacific Ocean", but because there is only one "Pacific Ocean" (despite being many oceans that could be called pacific) we capitalize it. There are many moons, but only one Moon. There are many presidents, but President as a title is capitalized, because it is used as a proper noun.
The proper way to refer to Google is "Google" when using the term as a noun -- it is a proper noun that refers to a company. The *verb* "google", meaning "to search for on Google", is not capitalized.
May we never see th
It seems to me that all this de-capitalization business is a bit silly. It should be a moot point. Words in the English language are capitalized when: (a) they are used to start a sentence. (b) they are used as a "proper noun." The term "internet" without the capital 'I' is an "improper noun", i.e., normal noun. Traditionally, the improper noun form has been used to mean "a network of networks." However, when one is talking about *the* (commonly known) worldwide network of networks, overseen by some authorities with a documentable history; a proper noun "Internet" is not only possible, but proper! If you want to de-capitalize something, how about newspapers quit printing "West Texas" and do it right: "west Texas," as Texas is not seperated into two states the way, say, Virginia and West Virginia are. "Texas" is the only proper noun in the phrase "west Texas" ("west" isn't even a noun, it's an adjective in this case!) Why do I bother? Ppl r goeeeng 2 rite lke ths N teh footure newayzzz--'coz nobdy karzzz. Or worst, it'll be L33T.
Can we now ban apostrophes in "CPU's", "MP3's", etc.? It just kills me that even The New York Times (which is normally a stickler for grammar) has adopted that bastardized punctuation as their standard.
When violence rules the world outside / And the headlines make me want to cry / It's not the time to just keep quiet
It's funny that in the development of the roman alphabet, originally there were only capitals. Lowercase letters were developed to make text more legible. So what do we actually still use capitals for? I mean, capitalizing names or words in a title or nouns etc. is just a convention. Just like spelling. In Europe, languages occasionally undergo a spelling change. What bugs me is why they never change the spelling to be consistent, let alone phonetic (e.g. corresponding 1 to 1 with the sound).
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I've never capitalized 'internet' but my word processors always want me to. Hopefully this is changed soon also.
Actually, there are such creatures, exactly as you suggest. The American and allied military and intelligence agencies run a SECRET-level internet called SIPRNET (Secret Internet Protocol Router NETwork) and a TOP SECRET-level one called JDISS (Joint Deployable Intelligence Support System). They're completely separate from the Internet (the publicly accessible one), but they're sprawling, worldwide internets connecting tens of thousands of machines.
Chris
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.
A lie is a lie.. Whether he said he invented the internet or said he was instrumental in its creation; both are lies. What is the difference?
Linux User #296508 Get Counted!
Actually, if you follow the link in this particular line of the slashdot article, you'll find Wired News's article on why they abandoned 'email' for 'e-mail' -- because 'e-mail' is grammatically correct, and 'email' is not, at least according to their reasoning. (It's actually a pretty good article, and one I read years ago.) Wired News did this ostensibly because the medium has "grown up" and the stylistic rules for the publication should reflect this. Or something.
Were one to read the slashdot article without following the link, you'd think that Wired dumped the hyphen from 'e-mail,' when in fact they didn't dump the hyphen at all -- rather, they started using it. This usage agrees with Webster and the OED and various other style guides in the industry. The previous use of 'email' without the hyphen was what they got rid of.
Personally, I don't care if people capitalize 'internet' or not. I prefer to capitalize it in most of my writing, because the Internet is a thing, a unique entity unto itself, and deserves to be considered a proper noun. It's not quite the same thing as television, which is a more nebulous and abstract concept (the word could describe the technology in general, the broadcast standard, the hardware used to display the broadcasts, or the programming that is being broadcast).
There's lots of capitalised proper nouns that are "obviously" unique and don't need to be capitalised. Wired should drop the uppercase letter for "god", "united nations", and "president of the united states". That'd generate lots more juicy controversy as well, which is after all the point of the excersize.
Actually, if you're just trying to be Wired (which means being relentlessly hip to try to avoid losing their self-assumed position as authority on Internet culture), there's a fair number of predictable "next moves":
Internet becomes "iNet". This is to fit with Apple's product naming scheme, which is cool, and therefore something that Wired is terribly concerned about associating itself with.
"I see" becomes "i c". Wired constantly promotes the claim that the Internet (oops, sorry -- "internet") is going to completely drive our lives and our culture, and currently most authorship is done via chat. What better way to argue their point than to let themselves be completely swayed by typos and shortcuts from chat?
Micropayments are "hip", so Wired stops selling "subscriptions" and starts selling "micropayments in twelve chunk block minimums".
"Internet time", or "beats" (a desperate attempt by Swatch, who has put every useful gadget and more onto a watch, to produce new required features to drive watch sales) will be adopted by Wired. I'm not sure that "beats" are hip or not, but they're certainly stupid and Internet culture-oriented, so Wired should love them. They can say "It took me @45 to write this article".
Wired will no longer refer to themselves as a "magazine". "Magazines" are pre-Internet culture, and "'zine" is only marginally more "hip". No, tablet computers are "hip", and so Wired will sell "paper tablets".
Speaking of "'zine", almost any word can be made more hip by chopping some prefix off and replacing the prefix with an apostrophe. We know this because a couple of sci fi authors have done this. Therefore, I won't "Download and read Wired on the Internet by 4:00 PM". Instead, I'll "'nload 'n rez wired on the internet by @3452". Where would we be without Wired for entertainment?
May we never see th
Are we also going to start lower-casing acronyms?
It seems that everything that requires a bit more thinking or complexity, even if it's trivial, gets simplified. That is why we no longer have beautiful architecture, furniture, et cetera with ornaments, but rather super-simple, utilitarian everything.
Lame.
Simpy
I think it was a rather logical reason: if there is only one instance of this thing and another one is impossible or unlikely to exist now or in the near future, it should be written capitalized.
So as long as logic prohibits the simultaneos existence of maybe two "internets", it will be written with a capital "I". Same thing goes for God - only one instance, never will be a second one beside it/Him or whatever. Applies to trademarks, as they denote a certain brand that is "unique" in some way. Even if there could be two "Fords" or three "Cadillacs", it's not possible to have a "Ford" that doesn't come from "Ford", whatever good or bad the connotation may be that comes with that name. Tautology aside, I bet that even goes for "I", because there's only one "I" for me. "You" is often not capitalized like it was in the past, but in formal letters it still is.
Strange thing I as a German has to tell you, because in German, all nouns are always written capitalized. (Hmm, all countries and languages are also written with capital letters in English. Same property: they are unique, too).
The abbreviation 'i.e.' does NOT mean 'for example.' If you want 'for example', use 'e.g.'
The former is an abbreviation for the latin 'id est', which means 'that is'. It's a rephrasing of what came before.
Your use is probably not strictly wrong, as reading it with 'that is' works, just 'e.g.' ('exempli grati') would work better.
frigidaire xeroxes kleenex. kodak at eleven.
This sig no verb.
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").
It's no more stupid than the endless stream of "OMG Bush is DUMB LOL" jokes we get on Slashdot (and are modded +5)...
#include "sig.h"
MP3s is a good example. "MP3" is not a word. It is not even an acronym, since it has no discernible vowels and the "3" is clearly not a pronounceable letter. Furthermore, it does not have a meaningful plural form: MP3s would presumably be pronounced "em pee three ess", but the actual pronunciation "em pee threes" seems to suggest that there are a set of threes of the MP variety.
A really stuffy way of indicating what is intended would be to write "MP3"s, to indicate that the thing in quotes is actually a quotation of informal speech. So it is quite reasonable to put a less ostentatious punctuation mark to say "Hey, this is a complete bastardisation of English, but this is what people are using."
Personally, I think that "MP3 files" is clearer and less offensive to us grammar Nazis, but newspapers have to reflect real world usage.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
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
Yes, they are, by definition.
eg TLD, TCP, PSTN, etc
Those are not acronyms. They are initialisms.
Capital Punishment?
Chili Palmer: "E.g." means "for example". What I think you want to use is "i.e.".
Ray "Bones" Barboni: Bullshit! That's short for "ergo".
Chili Palmer: Ask your man.
Bodyguard: To the best of my knowledge, "e.g." means "for example".
Ray "Bones" Barboni: E.g., i.e., fuck you! The point is this: When I say "jump", you say "OK", okay?
"Intranet" is meaningless marketspeak which usually applies to a Web site.
The technical term "internet" applies to a collection of "networked networks".
Genius.
Apparently you haven't made it into the real world yet. Intra means within. Inter means between. You have interstate roads (crossing boundaries) and intrastate roads (stay within the state). A corporations network that is not open to the public is an intranet. It is used only within (intra) the company.
intranet is most certainly not meaningless marketspeak.
On a similar vein, do you remember when these networks weren't referred to as "the" first?
FidoNet was FidoNet, ARPANET was ARPANET, and InterNet was InterNet, and not "The Internet".
I was aghast the first time I heard Dan Rather on the news describing "The Internet" in 1994. I was thinking, "News corespondent! Improper English!! Ahhhh!!!".
Does anyone else notice that Martin Sergeant from TechTV still calls it by it's proper name, "InterNet", and not "The Internet"?
Most of the time, I try to be exacting about spelling and grammar. I fully spell words in text messages, and I punctuate where appropriate.
At the same time, I am quite accepting about the way other people use the language and don't point out errors if the author's intent is still clear.
I do have some pet hates when it comes to grammar, such as incorrect usage of "begs the question", or overusage of the word "get". Until now, the "internet" has not been on that list.
However, if Wired has succumbed to the commercial world to the extent that it believes only trademarks and brandnames are truly deserving the consideration of the shift key, then let the battle lines be drawn!
"True believers are fond of capitalizing words, whether they be marketers or political junkies or, in this case, techies. If It's Capitalized, It Must Be Important."
This is the basis of their argument? Some idiots who misuse capital letters also inadvertently spell Internet correctly: therefore we should intentionally misspell it ourselves in order to disassociate ourselves from them.
What complete and utter bollocks. Bollix, if you prefer. While I can understand Wired wanting to distance themselves from marketing and political people, they have no need to do so with techies - their articles do that all by themselves.
Are the editors in Wired really that contemptuous?
That they claim there was never any reason to capitalise it in the first place reflects their disregard for the heritage of the Internet. That they view it as "just another medium for delivering and receiving information" overlooks the armies of network engineers, and the tonnes of switches, routers, and cabling required to keep the Internet alive. If we unplugged all the routers, there would be no Internet. I'm pretty sure there would still be an internet or two though.
Perhaps because you cannot catch a bus to the Internet you hesitate to use the shift key. I, however, have definately stubbed my toe on a portion of it before, and that for me is reason enough to capitalise it.
Slightly unrelated, I usually write "Thank god", except when I want to remind the Christians that there may be more than one.
Hmm. Theology meets regexp(3)... think its time for a new sig... (God)?|(god)*|(god)+
"A goldfish was his muse, eternally amused"
Around 1989, I noticed the Maritz Travel rep at my office had all kinds of literature with "Internet (R)(TM)" printed on it. They were doing a huge marketing campaign for their network.
Well I, being the geek, confronted the travel rep about this, asking how they can possibly claim a trademark for their network, when "internet" already was common usage for a public network.
Stupid travel rep didn't have a clue what I was talking about, and letters to managers in that company went unanswered.
I think there is a potential problem here. Maritz Travel could conceivably prevail in a trademark dispute over the word "Internet" applied to a computer network.
Nobody cared in 1989, and I doubt anyone cares today. They won't care until someone wins a lawsuit over it, I suppose.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Must be nice to have the time to worry about whether it should be the "I"nternet or the "i"nternet, "e-"mail or "e"mail. Don't people have "B"etter things to do with their lives?
I "G"uess not.....
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Vinton Cerf (generally acknowledged as the father of the Internet):
More here: http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue5_10/wigginNow, in Andrew Tanembaum's "Computer Networks, Third Edition" is an interesting part in chapter one that says:
(...) A collection of interconnected networks is called an internetwork or just internet.
(Here goes a paragraph explainin what a WAN is, snipped for brevity)
To avoid confusion, please note that the word "internet" will always be used in this book in a generic sense. In contrastm the Internet (note uppercase I) means a specific worldwide internet that is widely used to connect universities, government offices (....)
So there IS a reason to capitalize "Internet". Namely to indicate it is the internet we all know, instead of a minor internet somewhere else.
These two terms are also defined in RFC-1983 (Internet users' glossary), as defined in Tanembaum's book, with that distinction especially indicated. Sure, RFC-1983 is marked as "Informational", but it's still a RFC, and it shows a valid reason for the capitalization.
Clearly someone at Wired did not do the necesary research.
GPG 0x1B479C78
They were going to decapitalise 'Microsoft', but in the end capitalism was just too much a part of their image.
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
What next, will they also stop capitalizing "usenet" and "web browser" and
"service provider" and "post office" and "bank" and "grep" and "sort"?
If internet were a proper noun, there would be other worldwide communications
networks with other names. (No, don't say the phone network; phones and
web browsers transmit their data over the *same* network, they just do it
rather differently.) TCP/IP over avian carriers never really caught on,
for some strange reason, so we only have one internet. But if we had did
have two distinct internetworks, they'd both be internets.
usenet is an edge case -- it really probably ought to be a proper noun, but
it comes out of Unix culture, so it's lowercase as a matter of case-sensitive
spelling, even at the beginning of a sentence, like grep and sort (when sort
is used as a proper noun -- when sort is used as a verb or a common noun it's
from standard English and is capitalized according to the normal rules).
And yes, this is consistent with the normal rules of English, in the sense
that the normal rules of English allow for exceptions based on sepcial rules
pertaining to a given etymological source. There are also many English
words that are CamelCased -- and I don't just mean computer words, either --
because of their etymology or the particulars of the field they come from.
Similarly, words derived from foreign languages often form their plurals
specially or are pronounced specially according to the rules of the source
language or field, e.g., pianos and filet, respectively. case-sensitive
spellings from Unix culture are consistent with this.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.