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AP Style alert: Don’t capitalize internet and web any more
- daxfohl 11y agoWhat about the Information Superhighway?
- labster 11y agoThe highway's jammed with broken startups on a last chance power drive.
- justinlardinois 11y agoUnderrated comment.
- finin 11y agowait, what?!?
- gaur 11y agoWhen in doubt, I usually check Wikipedia's style guide [0] rather than anything else. Some of it is Wikipedia-specific (e.g., markup syntax), but there is also good general-purpose advice. It also has the major advantage of being free. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style
- sjy 11y agoI agree, Wikipedia's style guide is great! I think it strikes a good balance between prescription and flexibility, eg. being able to use local date formats and spellings in articles that relate to that locality.
- rsync 11y agoInternet should be capitalized when referring to the single, proper Internet that most of us use. However, one can create other internets, and those are not capitalized.
- userbinator 11y agoThat's basically my thoughts on the matter too. Relatedly, a few places where I've worked used "The Intranet" to refer to its internal network.
- thinkpad20 11y agoThat's what I was taught as well, but it seems that that's precisely the usage that the new style guidelines are changing. I don't personally think there's anything wrong either way, although my personal sense of style leans me towards the traditional capitalization.
- ademarre 11y agoOne explanation I've heard uses analogy with other communication mediums. "Your voice sounds familiar. Have we spoken on the Telephone before?" "No, but I used to be on the Radio."
- lern_too_spel 11y ago"Telephone" and "radio" are not proper nouns in your examples, unlike "the Internet," which refers to a specific internetwork. When using "internet" as a common noun to refer to any other internetwork, you should not capitalize according to the rules of English grammar. This style guide proposes an exception to grammar rules to fit common usage.
- towlejunior 11y agoGreat, but why in the world (not capitalized) do you consider it a proper noun?
- 11y ago
- skywhopper 11y agoI have to agree with others here that the particular reasons given in the article for why AP will no longer be capitalizing "Internet" don't really make sense. I'm pretty sure I always capitalize it, except perhaps in IM/chat when I capitalize very little. I don't know if I've ever capitalized "web". Certainly I remember how the NYT's insistence on spelling "weblogs" "Web logs" drove me nuts for years (this was way back in 1999 and the early 2000s before "blog", kids). The reasoning and usage of the people who coined and actually use a new word surely should have some influence on how it is spelled when the word is reported on. Which brings me back to "Internet"--same argument from me: the style should follow that of the people to whom the word is most relevant, unless they are just ludicrously out of step with common usage. So I'm curious if they actually did research on how people spell "Internet" in non-casual settings, or if they are just trying to set a precedent and truly believe that capital letters are "speed bumps" (that's true in a sense: our brain pauses on them precisely because we've trained ourselves to understand that they are used for Important Things like names).
- ddddddddq 11y agoWhy the hell not? It's a proper noun, and we capitalize them. The proper noun "Internet" refers to a specific instance of an "internet", a common noun.
- maaku 11y agoGoing further, "internet" is wrong. There have been, and still are in some cases multiple internets. The Internet may dwarf the others in size, but the distinction is still an important technical point (AP rules be damned).
- bcook 11y agoTechnical correctness is moot when the majority already (mis)understands a word's meaning. Regardless, "internet" is just a laughably generic abbreviation of "interconnected (computer) network". On the technical front, I would think WAN/MAN/LAN would be the more proper technical terminology, right? This whole conversation reminds me of the unwinnable fight to get popular media/culture to use "cracker", rather than the over-used and technically incorrect "hacker", when malicious black-hattery is afoot.
- Silhouette 11y agoI fear that today, most people's understanding of the Internet is the Web or, worse, Facebook. This isn't necessarily a misconception we want to promote either.
- maaku 11y agoTechnical correctness and precision language is what enables those of us who build the future to progress forward. Incorrect language and imprecise thinking holds back those who do not clear their minds, preventing them from contributing themselves to the global project of progress. These things do matter.
- alwaysdoit 11y agoSensible defaults are not a harm to technical correctness or precision. It's not like anyone would be able to refer to any of the other internets without at least a qualifying adjective, and it would likely require much more context than that.
- thinkpad20 11y agoI take a little issue with the article's quoted claim that "capital letters are speed bumps for the eyes when reading. They should be eliminated where possible." Says who? Capital letters appear all over, for a variety of reasons, and it doesn't cause any issues. Not to mention languages like German which capitalize way more than English.
- userbinator 11y agoThe article says "as one marketing website put it", which suggests to me it's nothing but a justification of the recent design trend of making things flat, bland, and "featureless", for lack of a better word. Capital letters make it easy to find proper nouns and sentences when scanning quickly. Their omission is why I find "IM speak" harder to read.
- dietrichepp 11y agoIM speak should be limited to short blocks of text. Ideally, you shouldn't be scanning it at all.
- d0m 11y agoIronically, while reading very quickly your comment, I clearly stopped on Germain because it was different than the rest of the words (capitalized) ;-)
- Negative1 11y agoWhen speed reading that is one technique to pick out sentence subject. They're not saying capitalization is an "issue", they're merely saying it causes more cognitive load so should be reserved for things that really do give the reader more information.
- jakub_h 11y ago> Not to mention languages like German which capitalize way more than English. And as everyone knows, Germans drive like crazy on their Autobahns, so they're clearly not the type of people who would willingly put speed bumps into their sentences. Therefore, capital letters don't work like speed bumps at all. My logic is bulletproof, case closed!
- ankushnarula 11y agoNext thing you know they'll tell us to stop capitalizing the Aristocracy.
- f1hybrid 11y ago"The Aristocrats" Best story ever.
- dredmorbius 11y agoSomeone tell the associated press we're totally down with that. Signed, The Internet
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- kristopolous 11y ago"Internet" used to be used without an article prefacing it. Sentences were structured like "you can get on internet with just a modem and a computer". Example usage from 1993, https://youtu.be/KDxqfgIDvEY https://youtu.be/KDxqfgIDvEY Also antiquated terms like "cyberspace" never adopted an article. "He's on cyberspace" not "the cyberspace".
- mwfunk 11y agoAs an old-timer: that was the exception, not the rule. It was just as much "the Internet" in 1993 as it is now. It just wasn't as widely known by the mass public, so different usages were less likely to be caught by editors/etc.
- kristopolous 11y agoThe usage appeared even in books on the topic. In my personal library I have a 1993 book, "The Electronic Traveller: Exploring Alternative Online Systems". You can see the lack of articles being used here: http://imgur.com/a4qbEuJ http://imgur.com/a4qbEuJ Both styles were widespread. Briefly...
- kristopolous 11y agoHere's another instance of this verbaige on CNN in 1993: https://youtu.be/4aIkMwUeL_Q https://youtu.be/4aIkMwUeL_Q ... And another: https://youtu.be/gQwTOizZcAs https://youtu.be/gQwTOizZcAs. This talk show even commented on this exact difference listening to their own archives: https://youtu.be/QmKCmuIT1C0I https://youtu.be/QmKCmuIT1C0I And another https://youtu.be/UlJku_CSyNg https://youtu.be/UlJku_CSyNg I provided 6 separate instances spanning 2 countries... This is not false information. There's 5 videos and a photo from a book. I have two more books with this usage if people want and I can dig up articles from newspapers too if needed. In fact, there was a drive in late 93, early 94 to actively discourage this variation from being used. I can also dig that up.
- takno 11y agoI don't recall internet without the "the" being used by anybody in the UK in the early 90s. One confounding factor is that news articles were almost 100% written by people who had no knowledge or experience of the topic, and were almost universally as buttock-clenchingly awful as any article written on youth culture at any point in history. In the US in particular the press seems to glory in using the wrong phrases and sounding utterly disconnected from whatever they are reporting on
- Ankaios 11y agoInternet Style alert: Don't capitalize associated press any more.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoAfter all, clearly it is just one of many associated presses.
- michaelbuddy 11y agoInteresting this made top voted story. People have strong views on the style guide I suppose.
- JoshMnem 11y agoThey are proper nouns. There is basically one Internet (in common speech) and one WWW. Other internets are not the Internet. (My spell checker doesn't recognize "internets".) What's next: "you are" will formally become "u r" bc ppl r 2 lazy 2 type?
- mc808 11y agoNext? No. Eventually? Maybe. We don't generally still say eow, þu, þe, ge, etc.
- JoshMnem 11y agoLanguages evolve, but I don't think that misuses should be formalized as correct. It's already hard enough for speakers of some languages to understand English's capitalization system. I think that adding more exceptions makes learning the language more difficult to learn. People frequently spell "I" with a lowercase letter, so why formally approve lowercase for "internet" but not for "i"?
- narag 11y agoDo proper names in English use article, really? I had the exact opposite idea (as in my own language). Actually I believed that "the" Internet was a weird exception, not the rule. Is there a specific rule? I ask because I haven't seen "The Michael" or "The Germany". I did see "The Netherlands", but that seems like an exception.
- munificent 11y ago> Is there a specific rule? There isn't a systematic rule as far as I know. Some proper names get a definite article, some don't. Sometimes "the" is part of the name and capitalized, and sometimes it's not: Germany, Washington, New York, Jesus, Dolph Lundgren, Apollo, Godzilla, JavaScript, Madonna, Microsoft. Uncapitalized: the Netherlands, the South, the President of the US, the Everglades, the Pleiades, the Rolling Stones. Capitalized: The Hague, The Rock. English is weird.
- narag 11y agoThank you for the clarification. It seems strange that "the President" is a proper name. In Spanish we used to say e.g. "el papa" (pope) when not mentioned near the proper name "el Papa Francisco". Nowadays even if they're still common names, a lot of public positions and institutions are capitalized by media, probably to show that they're more important than us, common mortals :-) I remember being annoyed writing documents for the job that insisted in taking this fad to an extreme and capitalizing everything that was even vaguely related to the authority positions. There's a special level at hell for language reformers.
- munificent 11y ago> It seems strange that "the President" is a proper name. I believe you say "the president" (lowercase), but "the President of the United States". It's only capitalized when part of the full title, I think.
- rogual 11y agoOne that I find interesting is that we Brits say "the BBC" but don't extend that courtesy to other broadcasters, either foreign (ABC, NBC) or British (ITV). I guess that reflects how it's seen as a little more than just a corporation, if still a little less than a government agency.
- VonGuard 11y agoFuck that. The Internet is a thing. The Web is a thing. Both are singular. Both are proper nouns. There's only one, though it may be huge.
- neuromute 11y agoNot an April Fools' joke. Colour me surprised, as some of the quoted previous AP changes are hilarious: 'more than' can replace 'over'... "More than my dead body!"
- shirro 11y agoI don't agree with this. The Internet is clearly a proper noun like America, Jesus or Associated Press. It is somewhere between a place and an idea which might confuse the AP people but it is THE big thing between a place and idea of our time and it deserves proper noun status. I take less issue with web being written lowercase. It is a shortening of World Wide Web anyway.
- DonHopkins 11y agoI am looking forward to the day that AP starts replacing the missing penultimate "e"'s in the poorly spelled names of companies that were too cheap to buy the correct domain name, like Flickr and Flattr.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- empressplay 11y agoI can't help but think there's a political motive in here somewhere? Stripping the Internet of its proper noun status could serve to help thwart attempts at declaring ownership over it, and help arguments to have it declared more globally as a common carrier.
- mark_l_watson 11y agoMy wife is my copy editor and she has me capitalize Internet and not capitalize web - and that also seems right to me.
- amelius 11y agoCan we also please put an end to the silly camelCaseNamingConvention, and use the much more clear underscore_naming_convention instead?
- goodcanadian 11y agoWow, reading the comments is fascinating. It is amazing how strong people's opinions can be on something that is ultimately inconsequential. Well, here's my two cents: I've never thought internet should be capitalized. I was always under the impression that was the majority view of tech people though from reading the comments here, I may be mistaken. It seems even that what is or is not a proper noun is not self evident. I do not consider internet or moon or sun (other common examples in these comments) to be proper nouns. Those are not their names. Just because we generally consider them singular and unique does not make them proper nouns anymore than "the car" is when I talk to my wife. We only have one car. It is singular and unique, but "Car" is not it's name. However, follow whatever rule you want. Most people are terrible at following the rules anyway, even when they know them. We just have to accept a certain amount of variability in these things. Just know that it will always look strange to me to see internet, sun, or moon capitalized.
- lucideer 11y agoJust to clarify on your moon example, the typical logic behind its capitalisation is that - e.g. - Jupiter has many moons (each with their own name), Earth has one moon; Earth's moon is called the Moon. There is only one internet [sic.] That said, the difference is absolutely inconsequential. English prepositions offer sufficient context to make this whole debate redundant in most cases anyway.
- rayiner 11y agoThe Moon and the Sun are the names for those things and are proper nouns. See: http://itsnameisthemoon.com http://itsnameisthemoon.com, http://itsnameisthesun.com http://itsnameisthesun.com.
- goodcanadian 11y agoI understand that is the opinion of many people. It is not, however, my opinion. In my opinion, those are descriptive and are not in fact names. If I were forced to name them, I might call them Luna and Sol.
- barney54 11y agoI always thought it did not make sense to capitalize Internet and web, so it's nice to see the AP catch up.
- applecore 11y agoIt's interesting to see both terms genericized. It was Alan Kay who said: > The Internet was done so well that most people think of it as a natural resource like the Pacific Ocean, rather than something that was man-made. . . . The Web, in comparison, is a joke. The Web was done by amateurs. http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/interview-with-alan-kay/240003442 http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/interview-wit...
- _asummers 11y agoAlan Kay has so many amazing quotes. One of my favorite funny ones is from an OOPSLA lecture where he says "arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras".
- nxzero 11y agoHistorically speaking, there were many Internets, and even today there are many Internets, it's a myth that there is an Internet, the Internet, etc. For example, users in China have an Internet that is different than an Internet in another country. Personally, if their was to be a style change, it in my opinion would be to stop saying "the Internet" since it is vague a leads to the public believing it exists.
- stevewilhelm 11y agoI wonder where the AP weighs in regarding the use of Wi-Fi? Wi-Fi is a registered trademark [1], with a standard implementation, but I could easily see the sentence, "My phone is using wifi to access the internet." being acceptable. [1] http://www.wi-fi.org/ http://www.wi-fi.org/
- ChrisArchitect 11y agowas there a push for the AP to not even use "internet (lowercase)" anymore, but go further, what the masses would call it - "Facebook"? (jury's out on whether that needs a capital haha)