Apart from the US senator who is afraid of the internet, the following references to online activity don’t make sense to me. And yes, I’ve seen and/or heard them.
- internets - how many was that?
- interweb - I guess it makes as much sense as intraweb, but I don’t like it. Having said that, it reminds me of:
- WWW page - it’s just a webpage now, brother.
Equally, when someone is giving a web address, things can get weird:
them: Alright, you ready? It’s H-T-T-P-colon-forward slash… are you okay?
me: What? Oh, yes, I’m just weeping for humanity. Please, continue.
All of that gibberish, and the idea for this post, came while writing my assignment for Mass Media in MS-Word. Microsoft says the correct spelling is capital “I”, Internet, as does the World Book Dictionary. To me, that’s on a par with the above-mentioned instances of unfamiliarity. What say you, dear reader?
technorati tags:noun, internet-language, language, internet
8 comments ↓
The Internet is a proper noun and thus deserves an uppercase I. It shits me to tears when people don’t spell it like that.
:-)
Thanks for the laugh.
I did know it was a noun, and every reference I’ve seen is uppercase I - it just doesn’t feel right. I also don’t like the variant spellings of the word poetaytoe, but I’ve never got my way on that one, either. Strange.
I think only German uses caps for nouns. You do not write in English “the Cat sat on the Window”. Even though Internet is a noun (just like “cat”), why use caps? (Remember, English is my second language. In Israel people still have a problem spelling that word, either in Hebrew or English).
Internet should be capitalised if it begins a sentence, otherwise not. You look something up on the internet, you go to Joe’s Online Blog-a-Rama, which is ON the internet, for your information.
Blonde - proper nouns take caps, like London, Dave, etc.
Suzanne - what are you basing that claim on? A knowledge of the specific grammar rule as it relates to this word(that you can show me), or your vast reading experience? I don’t understand why it’s a proper noun, but if it is, then I guess it ’should’ have caps. The journalism school style book doesn’t specify for I/internet, but does mention that a newspaper’s style book may include considerations such as “whether capitals are used for nouns that are not clearly proper nouns”.
Alright, this should settle the matter. Bren may wonder why the matter wasn’t settled after the first comment on this post, but trust me, my family demands proof… it’s a shortcoming that causes other people to feel their opinions aren’t valued - but most of my family do it, I think - you may have noticed that from my sister’s equally strident defense of small ‘i’ Internet.
From the Oxford English Dictionary:
Originally (in form internet): a computer network consisting of or connecting a number of smaller networks, such as two or more local area networks connected by a shared communications protocol; spec. such a network (called ARPAnet) operated by the U.S. Defense Department. In later use (usu. the Internet): the global computer network (which evolved out of ARPAnet) providing a variety of information and communication facilities to its users, and consisting of a loose confederation of interconnected networks which use standardized communication protocols; (also) the information available on this network.
1996 K. HAFNER & M. LYON Where Wizards stay up Late (1998) viii. 244
Roughly speaking, an ‘internet’ is private and the ‘Internet’ is public. The distinction didn’t really matter until the mid-1980s when route vendors began to sell equipment to construct private internets. But the distinction quickly blurred as the private internets built gateways to the public Internet.
thhhhhhhpt, as the mad cat would say. :> thanks for clarifying. But I’m still right. ;-)
Thanks. Another question: what is the difference between a “noun” and a “proper noun”?
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