Internet -> internet
April 2, 2016 2:07 PM   Subscribe

The Internet (old/current format) is blowing up at the Associated Press Stylebook announcement that as of June 1st it'll be the internet. Furthermore, Web will begin with a lower case w in all instances from the same date. One author made the case for this (Facebook picture) in 2009. However, others are disagreeing, while others are finding more to disagree on. This, of course, is all good publicity for the forthcoming product.
posted by Wordshore (105 comments total) 15 users marked this as a favorite
 
We knew this was going to happen.

Once there was the Internet.

Now there's the second net for academics, the dark net for dorks, and lordy what else is out there.

It's the internets. A series of parallel tubes converging at infinity. Or beyond.
posted by hank at 2:11 PM on April 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


I really hate the spelling with a capital I. I do not know why.
posted by dng at 2:12 PM on April 2, 2016 [22 favorites]


Chicago Manual of Style 4 Lyfe!1

1. Anonymous, Untitled CMOS Graffito, 2016. Acrylic on masonry, 124 cm x 86 cm. 5801 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago.
posted by infinitewindow at 2:20 PM on April 2, 2016 [20 favorites]


That's exactly the kind of filthy savagery I'd expect from an organization that doesn't require the Oxford comma.
posted by entropicamericana at 2:21 PM on April 2, 2016 [74 favorites]


[Ii]nternet not even remotely blowing up here. AP style guide is not the only one.

Anyway, does anyone call it more than “it” these days?
posted by scruss at 2:21 PM on April 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


They're wrong on the Oxford comma, but I think they're right on the internet, the web and email.
posted by chimaera at 2:25 PM on April 2, 2016 [13 favorites]


But we still spell 'Intarwebs' with a capital 'I', right?
posted by benito.strauss at 2:30 PM on April 2, 2016


INTERNETISM (Webism) bores us. We don't want to go about making a hullo-bulloo about the information superhighway, anymore than about knives and forks, elephants or tubes-in-series.
Elephants are VERY BIG. Broadband go quickly.


(this is what reading some of the manifestos linked in that recent thread does to one, sorry)
posted by comealongpole at 2:31 PM on April 2, 2016


Cortex: To tie in with the AP Stylebook announcement, see our press release about mEtAfIlTeR.

No.
posted by Wordshore at 2:43 PM on April 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


I stand by the capital 'I' even though I've been on the Internet most of my life.
posted by atoxyl at 2:48 PM on April 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


I remember reading the explanation that you can have your own internet that's not part of the Internet. Or many internets that aren't part of the Internet. The one internet that rose to become the giant squid was creatively named the Internet, as a proper name for a single, specific thing.

It's like if you gave the name "University" to a university. It's a stupid name, given the confusion it would cause, but it should still be capitalized when used to refer to that specific university.
posted by clawsoon at 2:48 PM on April 2, 2016 [8 favorites]


I really hate the spelling with a capital I. I do not know why.

Might have something to do with not living in one?
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:56 PM on April 2, 2016 [5 favorites]


By analogy, Academia.

Then along came for-profit colleges, of course.

Nothing lasts.
posted by hank at 3:01 PM on April 2, 2016


I can't believe they ignored my proposal to spell it in caps lock.
posted by compartment at 3:02 PM on April 2, 2016 [7 favorites]


(Yeah I agree, the Alot has email, we others have e-mails)

On topic, why not just circumnavigate the problem? I'm writing this on the nternet.
posted by Namlit at 3:04 PM on April 2, 2016


infobahn?
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:05 PM on April 2, 2016


Do you capitalize the words telephone, sewer, or plumbing? Water? Capitalization of nouns is for brand names and trademarks, not infrastructure services.

Also, we were calling it lowercase internet long before the AP even had to consider writing about it to the public, so why the fuck do they get to decide to capitalize it?

Anyway, it's also actually a condensened word derived from internetworking, which is really supposed to be a verb.
posted by loquacious at 3:16 PM on April 2, 2016 [11 favorites]


When I was at university I used to get a strange thrill from the word internetwork in Cisco manuals and stuff.

Again I don't know why.
posted by dng at 3:21 PM on April 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


Looks like I took a wrong turn on the information superhighway!
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 3:22 PM on April 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


In further news, ap.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:41 PM on April 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


Do you capitalize the words telephone, sewer, or plumbing? Water? Capitalization of nouns is for brand names and trademarks, not infrastructure services.

It's mainly for proper nouns. I think the I/internet (I really don't care) probably does count. But it's so entirely ubiquitous that, like the sun and the moon, most people would agree that capitalisation isn't obligatory in most contexts. Some style guides do capitalise "sun" and "moon", though.
posted by howfar at 3:46 PM on April 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


Do you capitalize the words telephone, sewer, or plumbing? Water? Capitalization of nouns is for brand names and trademarks, not infrastructure services.

You capitalize names of specific electrical power grids. This seems analogous. Imma keep capitalizing it and calling it email, sorry y'all.
posted by Rock Steady at 3:51 PM on April 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


AP Style Guide: Bad for the internets, bad for America!
posted by blue_beetle at 4:02 PM on April 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


I remember when we capitalized The Phone Company (but that was the President's Analyst era).

So when is this going to be updated in the database at Spell, Actualy?
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:04 PM on April 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


> You capitalize names of specific electrical power grids

Each is at the top of its own hierarchy, for now.

'oogled: "The Eastern Interconnection is one of the two major alternating-current (AC) electrical grids in North America. The other major interconnection is the Western ... The Texas Interconnection is one of the three minor alternating current (AC) power grids in North America...."

But once there's One Big Grid, they'll be grids.
posted by hank at 4:14 PM on April 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Today I drove my car on The Highway to McDonalds, where I plugged my laptop into The Electricity, connected to The Wireless, and wrote this message on The Internet.
posted by five fresh fish at 4:23 PM on April 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


Does anyone else remember it being almost always written as eMail in the 90s or early 2000s? Like even pre-ipod?

I sort of blame eMachines, but either way. Gross.
posted by emptythought at 4:28 PM on April 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


Actually, I live 500 feet from Highway 101 and grew up nearly as close to the Highway but 180 miles south... and in California we don't call it "Highway 101", it's "The 101"... as in "Take the 5 to the 210 to the 405 to the 101..." (and as Johnny Carson would add "...to the Slauson Cutoff and cut off your Slauson!" But I digress.)
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:30 PM on April 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


I stand by the capital 'I'

I do too, except during thunderstorms.
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:30 PM on April 2, 2016 [7 favorites]


Today I drove my car on The Highway to McDonalds, where I plugged my laptop into The Electricity, connected to The Wireless, and wrote this message on The Internet.

Why do you keep capitalizing "The"?
posted by clawsoon at 4:35 PM on April 2, 2016 [5 favorites]


Because I wanted to? Because it makes as much sense as capitalizing other random words?

If you like, I can also post it without capitalized "The"s, no problem.
posted by five fresh fish at 4:39 PM on April 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


"e-mail" makes my blood boil. You may think it's a stupid thing to get enraged about, but you're not me. As a new web developer, I spent half a day looking and feeling like a fool while I searched through i18n files* in our huge application for a phrase that contained "email". I couldn't find code that obviously existed, since it was creating thousands of emails for our customers every day that were wrong and needed to be fixed immediately. I was only able to find it when I looked more carefully to see the word my mind parsed as "email" was written as "e-mail". All this on the third day of my then-new job.

*i18n is short for "internationalization". We use files with words and phrases the site uses in different languages that are keyed so the code can find them. You can take a phrase and backtrack to see where the key is used. It's especially handy if you don't know your way around a big codebase very well.
posted by double block and bleed at 4:42 PM on April 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Maybe try a bunch of different permutations of capitalized words we can all vote on the best one.
posted by jeather at 4:47 PM on April 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


I think it should be written "e-m-a-i-l" and pronounced "eeeeee em ay eye el" (like the chorus of "Gloria"), just because that would make it so much more fun to talk about.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:49 PM on April 2, 2016 [7 favorites]


CAPS LOCK should always be spelled CAPS LOCK, and typed using the CAPS LOCK. You can tell if someone used the shift key; it's not the same.
posted by detachd at 4:51 PM on April 2, 2016 [28 favorites]


Because I wanted to? Because it makes as much sense as capitalizing other random words?

There are some conventions about what words get capitalised, though. Even though they're far from absolute or consistent. The thing we call "the I/internet" is pretty solidly inside the category of things we'd typically capitalise. But anyone who thinks there's a particularly clear answer to this is probably a bit overoptimistic about how much sense English orthography makes.
posted by howfar at 4:53 PM on April 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


This, of course, is all good publicity for the fact that just because something's been codified in the stylebook of a well-known organization doesn't mean it isn't completely, transparently wrong.
posted by sfenders at 4:54 PM on April 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


What are some other examples of proper nouns referring to specific things, like "sun" and "moon" mentioned above, which went from being capitalized to not being capitalized?

Because I wanted to? Because it makes as much sense as capitalizing other random words?

But the Internet is not a random word; it's a specific thing, with a specific given name. There's only one with that proper name. There are plenty of internets which are not the Internet. We don't capitalize when we're talking about them.

When we're talking about any old john, we don't capitalize. When we're talking about a specific john named John, we capitalize.

I don't really care, but it's fun to argue about.
posted by clawsoon at 4:59 PM on April 2, 2016 [7 favorites]


W3 sh0u1d sp311 1n734n37 us1ng 3l33t sp33k.
posted by jeffburdges at 5:00 PM on April 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


Namlit: nternets

The lowercase n would be very happy.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:01 PM on April 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


A longish time ago, but longish like maybe early 2000s not 1902 or whatever, I was working for a company that should have known better. It will remain unnamed, but let's just call it "Smell Dabs." And they had this gigantic style manual that they would periodically update and distribute to all employees to file, still shrinkwrapped, in the bottom of their file cabinets.

But one time, I was playing office clown and I opened mine! And read some parts of it!

And it dictated that internet be styled as Internet™, with the trademark owner credited in a footnote.
posted by ernielundquist at 5:12 PM on April 2, 2016 [13 favorites]


So as usual, you're 10-15 years after Scandinavia :-)

(but at least in Swedish, I'd say it's more "the net" vs "the web", the "inter" bit is kind of default...)
posted by effbot at 5:24 PM on April 2, 2016


Internet™, with the trademark owner credited in a footnote.

DMCA notice in 3... 2... 1...
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 5:30 PM on April 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


It's taken me this long to realize that the double-you double-you double-you isn't the entire In ...er ...online world.
posted by Chitownfats at 5:33 PM on April 2, 2016


There are a lot of suns, but there is only one Sun. There are a lot of moons, but there is only one Moon. There are a lot of internets, but only one Internet. The AP is wrong about all three.
posted by zsazsa at 5:39 PM on April 2, 2016 [12 favorites]


The lowercase n would be very happy.
I was waiting for that link. That song was so melancholy it'd make me tear up as a child.

Also, I had no idea "Internet" ever was capitalized. This is news to me.
posted by sourwookie at 5:43 PM on April 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


The lowercase n would be very happy.

Counterpoint.
posted by clawsoon at 5:53 PM on April 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


clawsoon: With all due respect, this is the true counterpoint.

Seems like a lot of work, though, what with all the pushing and shoving of the capital.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:01 PM on April 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


I would understand capitalizing the [M|m]oon or not in either case, the lowercase referring to "the only moon that's likely to be in the scope of the conversation." Much like if I tell you "I'm in the back yard" the particular back yard I'm in can be inferred from context. If I say that I am connected to the internet, it's reasonable to assume that I mean the big one that includes MetaFilter. (Which is the best and most culturally significant metafilter on the Internet.)
posted by NMcCoy at 6:02 PM on April 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


*i18n is short for "internationalization".

Or, more properly, "internationalisation".
posted by sebastienbailard at 6:06 PM on April 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


That song was so melancholy it'd make me tear up as a child.

It still does that to me now.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:09 PM on April 2, 2016


First they took one of the two spaces after the period, then the Oxford comma, and now the capitalization of Internet. Sigh. I have no more fight left.
posted by humanfont at 6:19 PM on April 2, 2016 [5 favorites]


We're all using the Internet to read and post on MetaFilter. There are other internets. We surf the Web, which comprises multiple websites. This ain't rocket science.
posted by echocollate at 6:19 PM on April 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Now five fresh fish has got me wondering why we sometimes use "the" in front of proper nouns and sometimes don't. We say, "I'm going to the McDonald's", but we don't say, "I'm going to the Harvard."

Why is that?

(First guess: It's shorthand for, "You know the one I mean," along the lines of what NMcCoy said.)
posted by clawsoon at 6:33 PM on April 2, 2016


the latest six people to comment here didn't even capitalize their own usernames, so i guess we're in no position to complain about unorthodox avoidance of upper case.
posted by sfenders at 6:34 PM on April 2, 2016


Even if the Internet is a nebulous entity, it's certainly a "place" that people point to ostensively, and as such, a location that can have a "name". However, I hate the capital I, and I'm very happy with "the internet" being understood such that it's like "the garage" in my house. I think one of the fault lines in this discussion might be between people who see it as a place versus a utility.
posted by SpacemanStix at 6:37 PM on April 2, 2016


They're wrong on the Oxford comma, but I think they're right on the internet, the web and email.

Flagged as offensive! Flagged as EVERYTHING!
posted by Justinian at 6:48 PM on April 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


Even if the Internet is a nebulous entity

Ah, but it's not a nebulous entity at all. It's a specific interconnected network, originally formed when ARPANET and the National Science Foundation network hooked their backbones together. If the network that you're connecting to is connected to that network, you're on the Internet. If the network that you're connecting to isn't connected to that network, you're on a different internet.

Perhaps you're on SIPRNet, for example. If you are, though, you won't be able to connect to Metafilter, since Metafilter is on the Internet internet but is not on the SIPRNet internet. Or perhaps you're on one of the private networks that the Iranians used to run their uranium enrichment centrifuges; to get from the Internet to those internets, the Stuxnet virus had to jump across, from the Internet to an internet, on USB sticks.

More about how there's nothing nebulous about it: To be on the Internet, you've got to have access to a routable IP address. They are handed out in a defined way by IANA. If you have access to one of those official addresses, you are on the Internet. If you don't, you aren't. It's a clear line with clearly defined processes to draw the line.

Also: People talk about the "dark web" as if it's not part of the Internet, but pretty much all of it is. They use IP addresses handed out by IANA. They are on the Internet.

So, yeah. Not nebulous. :-)
posted by clawsoon at 7:12 PM on April 2, 2016 [16 favorites]


While we're at it, it's e-fuckin-mail. Not email.

I am totally this. When the change comes (and I think it may be time), the new spelling will not be "email" but "mail".
posted by oheso at 7:33 PM on April 2, 2016


I spent half a day looking and feeling like a fool while I searched through i18n files* in our huge application for a phrase that contained "email".

Why didn't you search for "mail" from the start?
posted by oheso at 7:35 PM on April 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Metafilter: I don't really care, but it's fun to argue about.
posted by oheso at 7:41 PM on April 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


Or, more properly, "internationalisation".

I believe you meant to type, "internationalizational."

I am fine with lower-case internet, but when Skynet becomes lowercase I will worry.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:45 PM on April 2, 2016


Hell, about 20% of the people I work with don't capitalize "I" when using it to refer to themselves, forget the Internet.

Much ado, etc.
posted by Mooski at 7:48 PM on April 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


Why didn't you search for "mail" from the start?

umm, `grep -r "e.\?mail" *` or `ag "e.?mail"` I should think
posted by lastobelus at 7:48 PM on April 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


lastobelus: "Why didn't you search for "mail" from the start?

umm, `grep -r "e.\?mail" *` or `ag "e.?mail"` I should think
"

a)
$ ag -c mail config/locales/ | wc -l
723
b) It didn't occur to me there could be any character between e and m, because there should never be one in the word "email". We're in the 21st century, not 1978.
and
c) It was my third day on the job, I had impostor syndrome and was in a panic, certain I'd get unmasked as an idiot who couldn't even find, much less fix a stupid file. (Pilots have crashed airplanes by hyper-focusing on a problem.)
d) I wasn't a very good web dev yet :)
posted by double block and bleed at 8:47 PM on April 2, 2016


The first time I submitted an academic grant proposal, one of the referees got fixated on the fact I used the word "internet" with lower case "i" and they said that it showed I couldn't possibly have an academic background in digital media and therefore was completely unqualified to carry out research on the proposed topic (which was not actually about digital media, but happened to involve scraping a few blogs as part of the data collection).

Tldr: the Internet/Internet debate may have cost me $90,000 once.
posted by lollusc at 8:52 PM on April 2, 2016 [9 favorites]


I'm going to go back to using Infobahn, which keeps the capitalization since proper nouns always get one in German. Im Infobahn weiß niemand, du bist ein Hund.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 9:16 PM on April 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


Meanwhile, both bands called The Internet are maintaining their caps.
posted by a halcyon day at 9:59 PM on April 2, 2016


Just as long as we can still fight the System.
posted by zanni at 10:35 PM on April 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


and in California we don't call it "Highway 101", it's "The 101"

I'm amusing how much you Southern Californians don't even realize there's another half of the state.

You take 101 to 280 and then you can get on 1 for the scenic route, but 92 is faster.
posted by aspo at 11:29 PM on April 2, 2016 [7 favorites]


Yet you opt for the informal du over sie. Was ist das?!?
posted by humanfont at 11:30 PM on April 2, 2016


I'm going to go to the grave spelling it Internet. Then again, I type an extra seven characters to italicize my Latin abbreviations.
posted by ob1quixote at 1:48 AM on April 3, 2016


I'm amusing how much you Southern Californians don't even realize there's another half of the state.

So the perennial question - has anybody pinned down where exactly does 101 become the 101?
posted by atoxyl at 2:43 AM on April 3, 2016


Does anyone actual call their local network without Internet access "the internet"? If the non-internet network is at all significant, it probably has its own name, like SIPRnet, which is a separate network from the Internet, although the exact air-gap-ed-ness is a capital-S Secret, and it has a name in order not to be confused with the Internet.

Little-i internet is just called a network or intranet or LAN.

One of the successes of the Internet is that it's a global network, and not metered on a per country basis. I don't pay any extra fees for long-distance Internet in order to cross state lines and access German websites hosted in Germany.

Unfortunately, the Internet is increasingly becoming balkanized for various reasons, so the number of exceptions to that keeps rising.

More importantly though, if the only part of the Internet I can feasibly reach is Wikipedia and Facebook (via Internet Zero), does that really qualify to be called Internet access?
posted by fragmede at 3:53 AM on April 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


umm, `grep -r "e.\?mail" *` or `ag "e.?mail"` I should think

I can say from years of painful experience that if you don't make the search case-insensitive, you're probably going to miss some results. (The results where they use "Email" or "eMail" or "E-Mail", etc.)
posted by clawsoon at 5:04 AM on April 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


This, of course, is all good publicity for the fact that just because something's been codified in the stylebook of a well-known organization doesn't mean it isn't completely, transparently wrong.

Agreed. It's also a good example of language entropy, how we often adapt downward—call it dilution, ignorance, whatever.

The Internet has become the internet because most people have no idea how it works. ("It's computers and websites and probably some wires an' shit, right?") At some point you look around and three billion people are using the term with only an esoteric fraction having any understanding of its origin. So you acknowledge that its meaning has effectively changed—and if the vast majority doesn't understand why the word is capitalized, then you stop capitalizing it.

I don't know whether I agree with the decision, but I understand the rationale.
posted by cribcage at 7:50 AM on April 3, 2016


Since our company style guide is based on AP, we'll follow this, and it will be fine. I prefer email to e-mail, it's tidier. I never understood the utility of capitalizing Internet or Web, and neither did most of the people I edit for.

My main mission, as the person who teaches a basic writing class for our engineers, is to get people to stop using etc., i.e., or e.g. The first, because it makes client nervous when something written by an engineer implies that he or she doesn't actually know what all of the items involved might be. The second two because most people don't really know what they mean or when to use each one. Meanwhile, "such as" and "for example" do all the same work with less confusion. As it is, our clients have to wade through a minefield of jargon and technical details to read our documents, and I see no need to make their lives harder.

I suppose it's worth stating here that AP does not forbid the Oxford comma; it can be used when necessary for clarity. In my class, the example I use is "I love my parents, Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton."
posted by emjaybee at 8:25 AM on April 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


"You take 101 to 280 and then you can get on 1 for the scenic route, but 92 is faster"

I don't know how they do things farther down the Peninsula, but it was "the 1" and "the 80" for the entire decade I lived in the East Bay.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:17 AM on April 3, 2016


I don't know how they do things farther down the Peninsula, but it was "the 1" and "the 80" for the entire decade I lived in the East Bay.

As someone who rode my bike over 80 every day to do go school, someone who lived in Berkeley/Emeryville/Oakland for 20 years, etc etc, I can assure that no, it wasn't. "The 1" and "the 80" both sound gratingly wrong and would instantly mark you as being from not around here. The idea that you could live here 10 years and not pick up on that just boggles my mind.
posted by aspo at 10:06 AM on April 3, 2016


Just realized how amazing it would be if Applegoogle would let us set out devices' autocorrect to follow this or that manual of style. That is all.
posted by eustacescrubb at 11:02 AM on April 3, 2016


I tell you "I'm in the back yard" the particular back yard I'm in can be inferred from context.

You're in the back yard of the Internet?
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:20 AM on April 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


Of course you realize, this means war.
posted by Melismata at 11:49 AM on April 3, 2016


In Utah it's I-15, 215 (never I-215) And I-80 (never just 80), even though they are all interstates. In North Texas it's apparently* 35, 114, 121...in short we are a land of contrasts


*I just got here, so maybe I'm hanging with the wrong crowd
posted by Doleful Creature at 11:50 AM on April 3, 2016


You're in the back yard of the Internet?

Yeah, it's pretty nice out here. Lots of cute animals.
posted by NMcCoy at 1:00 PM on April 3, 2016


They weren't scared away by all the cats? Cool.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:27 PM on April 3, 2016


> In Utah it's I-15, 215 (never I-215) And I-80 (never just 80), even though they are all interstates.

In Boston, I-90 is "the pike" and I-95 is "128". I'm pretty sure they're being intentionally difficult.
posted by benito.strauss at 2:01 PM on April 3, 2016


As someone who rode my bike over 80 every day to do go school, someone who lived in Berkeley/Emeryville/Oakland for 20 years, etc etc, I can assure that no, it wasn't. "The 1" and "the 80" both sound gratingly wrong and would instantly mark you as being from not around here. The idea that you could live here 10 years and not pick up on that just boggles my mind.

"The 80" (which is the freeway I've taken the most times in life, by far) sounds super wrong to me, "the 101" less so but probably just because LA also has 101. I repeat my inquiry about the dividing line - SLO? (completely pulled out of my ass) Can we do a poll on this?
posted by atoxyl at 2:57 PM on April 3, 2016


(completely pulled out of my ass) Can we do a poll on this?

And if you've ever pulled a poll out of your ass, you know how painful that can be...
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:11 PM on April 3, 2016


STET. JUST STET, YOU BASTARDS.
posted by scratch at 5:12 PM on April 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


“Writing is notoriously hard, even for the best writers. Yet there is a tremendous amount of knowledge about the discipline strewn across usage guides, dictionaries, technical manuals, essays, pamphlets, websites, and the hearts and minds of great authors and editors. But poring over Strunk & White hardly makes one a better writer — it turns you into neither Strunk nor White. And nobody has the capacity to apply all the advice from Garner’s Modern American Usage, a 975-page usage guide, to everything they write. In fact, the whole notion that one becomes a better writer by reading advice on writing rests on untenable assumptions about learning and memory. The traditional formats of knowledge about writing are thus essentially inert, waiting to be transformed.

“We devised a simple solution: proselint, a linter for prose. (A linter is a computer program that, like a spell checker, scans through a document and analyzes it.)”
posted by ob1quixote at 6:26 PM on April 3, 2016


I like this conversation.

So for my two cents worth, I don't think internet should be capitalised. It'd be like capitalising "plumbing" or "electricity" or "TV".... oh wait.
posted by Diag at 7:50 PM on April 3, 2016


Water in a Californian reservoir and water in a cistern in Portugal don't touch at all, outside of a hippie "all of Earth's waters are connected" sort of way. Water in that cistern doesn't care that California's reservoir water might be running low, and if my water is out, it doesn't cause your water to stop being water.

Same goes for electricity. Electricity in different countries even comes in a different forms, from different sources. It's still called electricity when mine is out but yours is.

The Internet is not like that. If I can't load Metafilter the question becomes did I lose Internet access, or did they?

Entire countries can be forced offline for political reasons, like happened during the Arab Spring. Even though computers inside the country could still talk to each other, it can't really be said that they were still on the Internet.

It refers to a globally connected computer network which has never existed before in the history of mankind, and that global connectivity is important for it to be the Internet. Water and electricity don't share that same property.
posted by fragmede at 1:59 AM on April 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


I used to have a job writing copy for shitty websites. You know, the kind of sites that only exist to bring in revenue from targeted banner ads. My company's style manual dictated that it be "the Internet," and we'd get in trouble if we messed that up.

I hated that job. Before I started working there, I had never even thought about whether or not to capitalize the first letter. But when I quit, I made a point of never capitalizing, because now no one can stop me. It's my little act of rebellion against the kinds of companies that I honestly believe are ruining the internet for everyone.
posted by teponaztli at 2:07 AM on April 4, 2016 [2 favorites]


Water in a Californian reservoir and water in a cistern in Portugal don't touch at all, outside of a hippie "all of Earth's waters are connected" sort of way.

So, the water cycle is a hippie thing now? Water doesn't stay in those reservoirs you know, and probably lots of California water gets to Portugal faster than you think, and vice versa.

Though I do appreciate this analogy for making me think of all the ways water evaporating, condensing, and raining down around the world might be like the way data moves through the internet. It's rather poetic. What would the equivalent of icebergs be; things that haven't yet been digitized/returned to the water cycle? Deserts would be places without connectivity.
posted by emjaybee at 7:40 AM on April 4, 2016


Science Alert: People who constantly point out grammar mistakes are pretty much jerks, scientists find.
posted by clawsoon at 8:14 AM on April 4, 2016


About the water/electricity/utility analogies: The Internet is capitalized because it's like the Nile, or the Pacific Ocean, or the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity. It's a specific, named entity.

But people think that it's a general term for being connected to a kind of grid, like electricity is a general term for being connected to any one of many specific electrical grids. It's not. You wouldn't write that you're padding down the amazon river, or that you get electricity from the european network of transmission system operators for electricity.

What would the equivalent of icebergs be; things that haven't yet been digitized/returned to the water cycle?

Tape backups.
posted by clawsoon at 8:35 AM on April 4, 2016 [4 favorites]


It feels like it should be different on different platforms. On UNIX you read a bunch of bytes from /dev/internet, on Win32 you call GetInterNetPage(LPTR handle, ...) and on OS X you send a message [NSInternet page:url] and Safari automatically opens up.
posted by benito.strauss at 10:04 AM on April 4, 2016


"I can assure that no, it wasn't"

No true Scotsman . . .
posted by aspersioncast at 11:37 AM on April 4, 2016


I think it should be written "e-m-a-i-l" and pronounced "eeeeee em ay eye el"

Hmmm. If you say that out loud fast enough, it kind of sounds like the name of an archangel.
posted by webmutant at 7:32 PM on April 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


And it dictated that internet be styled as Internet™, with the trademark owner credited in a footnote.

I cam only assume that the trademark owner was Henry van Statten.
posted by webmutant at 7:34 PM on April 4, 2016


About the water/electricity/utility analogies: The Internet is capitalized because it's like the Nile, or the Pacific Ocean, or the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity. It's a specific, named entity.

One swims in the ocean, not the Ocean.

What we need is a well thought-out compromise. Compromises make everyone happy:

"
The ɪɴᴛᴇʀɴᴇᴛ (old/current format) is blowing up at the ᴀꜱꜱᴏᴄɪᴀᴛᴇᴅ ᴩʀᴇꜱꜱ ꜱᴛyʟᴇʙᴏᴏᴋ announcement that as of ᴊᴜɴᴇ 1st it'll be the ɪɴᴛᴇʀɴᴇᴛ. Furthermore, ᴡᴇʙ will begin with a lower case w in all instances from the same date. One author made the case for this (ꜰᴀᴄᴇʙᴏᴏᴋ picture) in 2009. However, others are disagreeing, while others are finding more to disagree on. This, of course, is all good publicity for the forthcoming product.
"

(see also.)
posted by sebastienbailard at 7:58 PM on April 4, 2016


One swims in the ocean, not the Ocean

An ocean, the Pacific/Atlantic/Whatever Ocean. I really think there's a lot of reaching, here. English orthography just isn't very regular.
posted by howfar at 11:31 AM on April 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


"These United States"
posted by aspersioncast at 11:59 AM on April 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


*sigh*

BACK TO MY GIG ENFORCING CHICAGO STYLE PLUS WHATEVER RIDICULOUS IN-HOUSE CONVENTIONS THIS PARTICULAR ACADEMIC PUBLISHER HAS ADOPTED

Love,

The Precariat
posted by salix at 7:12 PM on April 6, 2016 [2 favorites]


*lifts shirt to reveal "CMS" tattoo in ornate cursive font across chest*
posted by echocollate at 10:44 AM on April 8, 2016


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