It hasn’t happened yet in either the Lower 48 or Alaska, but it’s bound to happen soon.
And on that day when the style desks of the New York Times and the Associated Press finally issue a nationally-televised press release about the need to start lowercasing the word “internet” in all news articles, headlines and blogs, we will know that America has finally woken up to web-based reality.
We don’t capitalize words like Radio or Television or Motion Pictures anymore, do we? Once, of course, we did.
Now, we know better.
However, regarding the internet, we are still behind the curve, behind the Brits, lost in capitalization land. The Guardian and the BBC websites got it right, long ago. We need to play catch up. Now.
On the day when the New York Times and the Associated Press finally issue a press release to all newspaper and online editors about the need to start lowercasing the word internet in all news articles, headlines and blogs, America will finally have seen the light.
On that day:
–We will, as a society, have finally acknowledged a deep shift in the way we think about the online world.
–We will, as a society, have given substance to the belief, finally, that the internet is part of the everyday universe and not some uppercase novelty.
–We will have come to understand that capitalization of internet earlier in history seemed to imply that reaching into the vast, interconnected ether was a brand-name experience when it really wasn’t.
–We will have realized that the earlier capitalization of internet seemed to place an inordinate, almost private emphasis on it, turning it into a Kleenex or a Frigidaire. But we now know that the internet, at least philosophically, should not be owned by anyone and that it is really part of the neural universe of life.
–We will have realized that the digital revolution is over, the internet won and is now part of everyone’s life, as common as air and water (neither of which starts with a capital letter).
–We will have realized that the moment was right to treat the internet the way we now refer to the movies, television, radio and, dare I mention it, the telephone.
–We will have realized that the New York Times was right back in 2002 when it said that there was some virtue in the theory that the internet was becoming a generic term, and that it would not be surprising to see lowercase usage eclipse uppercase usage within a few years.
Maybe before 2011 is over?
I recently asked Phil Corbett, a top editor at the New York Times, what the Times policy is on lowercasing or capitalizing words, especially the word internet (lowercase), or as the Times still writes it, Internet (caps). He replied in internet time, saying:
“Our current style is to keep the uppercase “I for Internet.” I agree that the trend is toward lowercase, and I suspect that at some point we will review our style. But our preference is to follow established usage, not to lead the way. So I can’t predict when the change might be made.”
So, do we follow the Brits here, or do we lag behind for 10 more years?
”Dan – We just (or I should say our editor just) made an executive decision to abandon the hyphen in “e-mail” – based on the frequency with which our correspondents leave it out – a decision with which I disagree but find not worth going to the mat over. But he has affirmed uppercasing Internet and Web, however, decisions which I expect you’ll find ample reason to disagree with, as in your essay!”
– email today from an editor at the Providence Journal in Rhode Island
The geek answer is that internets (networks that are connections between other networks) are always in lower-case, but that the Internet is one specific internet, the public one based on IP.
There are lots of radio and television stations. There’s only one Internet.
I just heard from Joe Turow at UPenn and he said “I can’t believe it’s been almost ten years on this and no progress at all…” [paraphrased]..
“Nicely written. It’s hard to believe it’s been ten years since that piece appeared, and hard to believe that the Times and other mainstream media firms still capitalize the word.”
— Joe
and Jesse Sheidlower an editor at the OED, told me today re this when I asked for his POV on the piec above:
“I don’t have any strong opinion myself. A lot of people use “internet”,
most of the edited publications use “Internet”. I assume eventually most
people will shift to “internet”, but we’re not there yet.”
Paul, good post and good point and i have seen that noted all over geek sites and they are right, too. RE: “The geek answer is that internets (networks that are connections between other networks) are always in lower-case, but that the Internet is one specific internet, the public one based on IP.There are lots of radio and television stations. There’s only one Internet.”
But Paul, i have one question, given the geek answer you outline above, why is then that our brothers and sisters in the UK currently lowercase internet, at least in the Guardian newspaper and website and at the BBC website too. And I think Ozzies go for the lowercase treatment too. And they have geeks in both countries, so why USA insists on CAPS and UK and OZ go lowercase? Can you answer that, from a geek answer POV? I am curious. See the TechEye webiste in London, they go lowercase all the time for internet and have been for ages. And WIRED magazine went lowercase in 2o04 in the USA. So why the slow progress on this?
Do u think it will always been CAPS in USA or will time turn the tide? Your POV?
Btw, i have no dog in this fight, and i have no agenda here. Just an interested observer of the grammar rules. I can live with it both ways, but i do think it is trending downward year by year…But nothing can change in the USA until….until NYT and AP style guides say so….. so until then. happy Internet!
I don’t see how capitalizing “Internet” makes it sound more commercial; after all, capitalizing “California” or “Earth” or “Universe” don’t make those terms commercial.
Side note: “Universe” is not capitalized when talking about “the universe of possibilities,” but is capitalized when we are talking about the specific Universe (a specific place, albeit a very large one) that we live in and that contains the Milky Way Galaxy. Your usage of the “everyday universe” is probably not meant to reference the particular place and is therefore properly lowercase. The usage for “Internet” is somewhat similar — if you’re just talking about “being connected” or being on a company network, then capitalization wouldn’t be proper. But as a particular “place,” of which there is only one specific Internet that we’re talking about, the capitalization makes sense.
At some point, there might be multiple competing internets, private internets and such (sometimes I do wish I had the option to temporarily use a more-curated, less-spammy version for research or something) — and they’d either need different names altogether or wouldn’t be capitalized, while the existing Internet would be.
ERic Zorn at the Chicago Tribune siad this in 2009:
”Yes, but there’s also only one universe. One sky. One atmosphere. One cosmos. One electromagnetic spectrum. We don’t capitalize those. Neither, for that matter, do we capitalize cyberspace or blogosphere..
I doubt I can change Tribune style, but I can change how I write this word on social networking sites. So that’s my plan for now. Who’s with me?
FOR MORE…
The Guardian (UK) style guide: lower case
The Chicago Manual of Style — whatever
Wired News — “In the case of internet, web and net, a change in our house style (from upper case to lower case) was necessary to put into perspective what the internet is: another medium for delivering and receiving information.”
This NPR essay by Geoff Nunberg — says in the 1920s, people used to capitalize “radio” and “cinema,” and says the capitalization urge comes from the urge many people have to think of the Internet as a literal space.
and, as always, Wikipedia.
It proves to me that some people have way too much times on their hands .. and I am amused at how the New York Times and the Associated Press can suddenly become ‘we, as a society’…
I look forward to the change, but I’ve never spelled internet with a capital I. Nor have I (in spite of my advanced age, and therefore long history 🙂 ever spelled or seen telephone or radio or television with capitals.
In fact, I was curious enough about this to check on it, using Google’s (another word I don’t capitalize when using it as a verb meaning “to do an internet search”) Ngram Viewer ( http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/ ), which states that it is case-sensitive. I searched for phrases such as “on the telephone” vs “on the Telephone.” I included the prepositions to isolate contextual capitalization where the word “telephone” begins a sentence.
The results, as I read them, are fairly clear. It seems to me that there has never been a time when telephone, television, etc, were routinely capitalized. Perhaps there is better evidence, but until then, I remain unconvinced.
And look at me — I never even got up on my favorite horse about the difference between “capital” and “upper-case.” Yay, me!
Levi, to find examples of Radio and Television and Telephone being capped, you will have to go to old books and magazines and newspapers published in 1920s, 1930s, etc….. these things are not online…..but what i said is true….NPR had a big story on this .google this topic at NPR website…..danny
Levi…..re ”Long ago, Americans used to capitalize words like “television,”
“radio” and “cinema,” according to National Public Radio commentator
Geoff Nunberg.
Levi, contact Dr Nunberg here below
School of Information
University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley CA 94720
nunberg at-sign berkeley-dot-edu