Comments on: Capitalization Madness

By: Don Lapre Boy

Don Lapre Boy — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 22:51:54 +0000

This made me smile!
“Goodnight, Moon. Goodnight, Sun.
Goodnight, thing of which there’s one.
Goodnight, time, and goodnight, space,
and goodnight, things in lower case.”

I do it just because grammatically we are taught to.

Who knows the grammatics of internet land anyway?

John
http://www.motivationace.com
john@motivationace.com

By: Richard Kirman

Richard Kirman — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 10:28:36 +0000

I have to go with the lower-case majority. The internet is not a specific thing, it’s just another name for a network of computers. Perhaps it does not even deserve the definite article that normally precedes it and should be simply “internet”.

P.S. I use email, as I’m lazy and it saves me a keystroke.

By: Scot Hacker

Scot Hacker — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 09:15:49 +0000

Elise, I’m smiling ear to ear – thanks for that :)

By: Elise Matthesen

Elise Matthesen — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 06:27:27 +0000

Goodnight, Moon. Goodnight, Sun.
Goodnight, thing of which there’s one.
Goodnight, time, and goodnight, space,
and goodnight, things in lower case.

By: Eric Walker

Eric Walker — Fri, 12 Mar 2004 22:34:29 +0000

There is only one sky. If going by the logic that we capitalize that which there is only one of, why is sky not capitalized? I hold that the internet / the web are in the same category as the sky.

The logic is not that what there is one of is a proper noun–there can be more than one “Jane Smith”–but that a proper noun is proper, is the name of a particular thing.

We can look at the paintings of Chesley Bonestell and refer to the appearance of the sky of Mars, or of Jupiter, so there is not, in fact, one “Sky”. A network using the same methodology as the Internet but not part of it is, so far as I can see from all sources, not “an internet” but rather “an intranet”.

Mars has two moons, but the moon we talk about sending men to again is the Moon, because that’s its name (popularly, anyway).

By: Scot Hacker

Scot Hacker — Fri, 12 Mar 2004 16:58:16 +0000

Geoff – “internets” that are not in some way connected to “the Internet” — and thus a part of it — are so rare that the distinction is almost purely academic.

By: Geoff Cohen

Geoff Cohen — Fri, 12 Mar 2004 15:52:12 +0000

There’s a difference between *an* internet — any network that uses TCP/IP as the protocol — and *the* Internet — the specific network-of-networks that I’m using right now to post to this website.

By: Scot Hacker

Scot Hacker — Fri, 12 Mar 2004 08:52:25 +0000

Eric -

There is only one sky. If going by the logic that we capitalize that which there is only one of, why is sky not capitalized? I hold that the internet / the web are in the same category as the sky.

By: Eric Walker

Eric Walker — Fri, 12 Mar 2004 00:58:58 +0000

We capitalize "proper nouns", to indicate their status as proper nouns. A "proper noun" is not a rigidly defined thing, as even the invariably sappy Chicago manages to grasp; still, the root of the term is a clue: proprius, "one's own". A proper noun is thus the name of a particular thing: this is Jane, that's the Brooklyn Bridge, yonder is the Internet. It makes little sense to speak of "an internet"--there is only one--so Internet is its "proper" name as Jane is her own name and Brooklyn is the bridge's (and borough's) own name. The case for web is, I feel, less definite. Indeed, if we accept the idea that there can be more than one "web", we have a useful distinction: "the Web" is the one and only WWW, while "the web" is some other similar network. (If, though, we do not accept that there can, in normal and reasonable use, be more than one web, logic leads, as with the Internet, to the Web.)

By: HP

HP — Thu, 11 Mar 2004 16:08:31 +0000

Ooh, since NelC reopened a dead thread, I'll jump in with a digression. To mikepop: When I copyedited for Macmillan about 12 years ago, I pushed for email with no hyphen. But a check of an unabridged dictionary showed email as a fairly obscure but long-lived word. IIRC, it's pronounced ay-MY(l), and refers to a yellowish/brownish/grey color. From the French for vole or something. Use it on those days when taupe just won't do. My Webster NCD shows it as E-mail, with a hypen and a capital!

By: NelC

NelC — Wed, 10 Mar 2004 22:44:24 +0000

Personally, I’ve usually capitalised the Internet, on the basis that there’s only one, like the Earth or the Pope. OTOH, I usually don’t capitalise the web, on the basis of inconsistency, I suppose.

By: Sidelights

Sidelights — Wed, 10 Mar 2004 17:13:25 +0000

http://www.nielsenhayden.com/electroside/archives/2004_03.html#004886

Fighting back against the capitalization fetishists…

By: mike

mike — Mon, 30 Dec 2002 04:09:55 +0000

Hm, Internet becoming internet as Xerox becomes xerox and Kleenex becomes kleenex.

Except no-one copyrighted the term back in the day.

Actually this is the best usage-based argument for it I can think of. Much better than the obvious analogies technophiles make between the internet and the ocean – that’s what it looks like to us, but it’s inaccurate, since the internet is not naturally occuring.

Another intriguing pickle in ths matter is the way we use the words: we speak of “ocean” and “the ocean” but only slightly overeducated brits use both “internet” and “the internet”. To see what i maen, here’s my first use of both words here without the the:

Much better than the obvious analogies technophiles make between internet and ocean – that’s what it looks like to us, but it’s inaccurate, since internet is not naturally occuring.

See how that’s just wrong?

I guess then that words like telephone are the best representative of what we are seeing.

Ah well, the debate goes on.

By: philm

philm — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 14:48:16 +0000

something at the NYT about this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/29/weekinreview/29SCHW.html

me?

sometimes my caps key doesn’t work ;)

By: Lars

Lars — Sun, 15 Dec 2002 17:19:33 +0000

Just these days I found the ‘Design and Implementation of 4.4BSD’ talking about “the DARPA Internet”, which suggests to me that “internet” really started out as a proper name for a network and only over time came to represent the technologies used to built the network.