Is 'internet' a proper noun or not???

[levdrakon]

I don't capitalize it. I'm getting sick of Microsoft Word flagging it and suggesting Internet.

So which is it? Capitalized or not?

[RealityChuck]

There's only one Internet. That makes it a proper noun, and it should be capitalized.

According to Wikipedia, most newspapers, periodicals, and technical journals capitalize the term, though some (mostly in the UK) have started using it lower case.

It is, of course, a matter of style, so you can do what you wish as long as you're consistent.

[Siam Sam]

I cap Internet but not intranet. The former is a proper noun, the latter is not.

[lissener]

Agreed. When I'm proofing, I cap Internet, but not intranet.

[Sunspace]

Yes. An internet is a group of computer networks, connected together. The Internet is the worldwide publically-accessible internet (note small i) to which we all connect.

[Exapno Mapcase]

As a matter of style, internet will lose its capital in the near future. (If president has, I guarantee internet will follow.) If you want to leave it uncapitalized now in any informal context (like the Dope) it won't raise an eyebrow.

If you are in a formal context, use whatever the mandated style guide says.

[levdrakon]

Originally Posted by Exapno Mapcase

If you are in a formal context, use whatever the mandated style guide says.

I'm writing for school, and the only style guide we've got so far is APA, which doesn't have much to say about spelling.

I haven't asked my instructors, but judging from their writing, it's a toss up.

I was of the mind the word is so commonplace now it's like saying "phone system."

[mwbrooks]

Originally Posted by Exapno Mapcase

As a matter of style, internet will lose its capital in the near future. (If president has, I guarantee internet will follow.) If you want to leave it uncapitalized now in any informal context (like the Dope) it won't raise an eyebrow.

If you are in a formal context, use whatever the mandated style guide says.

I tend to agree, but are there cases where "internet" is still generic? Historically, two or more connected private networks would be called "an internet." Has this usage been entirely replaced by "intranet"? If so, I guess the way is clear to downcase "the Internet."

BTW: "Phone system" is rather ambiguous nowadays. The last time I wrote about that copper wire that used to run to your house, it was an acronym: POTS, meaning plain old telephone service (in the U.S.). No kidding.

[Švejk]

Originally Posted by RealityChuck

There's only one Internet. That makes it a proper noun, and it should be capitalized.

Whence this rule that everything of which there is only one needs to be capitalized? There is only one sun (only one star that we call sun, I mean) and we don't capitalize that.

[Scarlett67]

Originally Posted by Švejk

Whence this rule that everything of which there is only one needs to be capitalized? There is only one sun (only one star that we call sun, I mean) and we don't capitalize that.

Sometimes we do. It is a style choice.

[Siam Sam]

Originally Posted by Švejk

Whence this rule that everything of which there is only one needs to be capitalized? There is only one sun (only one star that we call sun, I mean) and we don't capitalize that.

The way I do it is: "The spaceship headed for the Sun," but "We hung the sheets up to dry in the sun."

[levdrakon]

Originally Posted by Siam Sam

The way I do it is: "The spaceship headed for the Sun," but "We hung the sheets up to dry in the sun."

The way I understand it is the planets are capitalized, including the earth, if it's included in the list. By itself, earth doesn't get capitalized. Not sure but the sun may be treated the same way.

[Siam Sam]

Originally Posted by levdrakon

The way I understand it is the planets are capitalized, including the earth, if it's included in the list. By itself, earth doesn't get capitalized. Not sure but the sun may be treated the same way.

I treat Earth/earth pretty much the same way I treat Sun/sun: "On Earth, there are 6 billion people," but "They dug up the earth in their search." That's a little different than Sun/sun, because "earth" lowercased in my example is clearly a synonym for "dirt," not the name of a planet. Of course, "sun" lowercased is also a synonym for "sunlight" or "sunshine," I guess.

[aldiboronti]

Originally Posted by Švejk

Whence this rule that everything of which there is only one needs to be capitalized? There is only one sun (only one star that we call sun, I mean) and we don't capitalize that.

Actually there are many suns. In astronomy, in science fiction, the lower-case sun
is often used when speaking of other stars and systems.

[iturntoyou]

So it's like Saturn has many moons, the Earth has one moon. If you're standing on the black earth, staring up at the Moon you can see Saturn's moon, if you had eyes like a telescope

[Rhythmdvl]

I was surprised the Chicago Manual of Style doesn’t directly address this (checking both the book and the Web site). The closest thing I could find was from the Q&A section:

Originally posted by Chicago Manual of Style Online
Q. Your online Q&As are helpful. Is it time to revisit the question of whether to capitalize Internet and Web site? It seems that both of these have come to refer to phenomena that are generic, like telephone line or billboard. Or can you show us that they are formal, official names of entities that require a proper noun?

A. The “website” versus “Web site” debate is discussed elsewhere in this section. As for “Internet,” I think it is relatively clear that people use the term “Internet” (capital I) to refer to the whole thing. This “whole thing” is the growing collection of servers worldwide that have a connection or potential connection to each other using a standard protocol for network addresses and communication known as TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol). Government agencies involved in its development and maintenance, such as the National Science Foundation, refer to the capital-I Internet, and I think there is, for now, little reason to fret over capitalizing it, as long as one is not using the term more generically—for example, to refer simply to any network of computers.

As always with these types of questions, your ultimate guide is whoever assigned the project (e.g., boss, professor, client). They choose which style guidelines to follow and what exceptions there are. If you have a style guide to work from but not a direct answer, try looking in other places for how it treats the term. There must be uses of Internet in the guidelines that deal with sources and citation – see how it’s used there.

Good luck


ETA:

Originally Posted by Exapno Mapcase

As a matter of style, internet will lose its capital in the near future. (If president has, I guarantee internet will follow.)

I missed this memo. I know there has always been a distinction between the general and the specific case, but when is it president Bush?

[mwbrooks]

Originally Posted by Rhythmdvl

I missed this memo. I know there has always been a distinction between the general and the specific case, but when is it president Bush?

Perhaps Expano is referring only to the noun, not the title. So you could say Bush is the president, but should still address him as President Bush.

[Rhythmdvl]

Originally Posted by mwbrooks

Perhaps Expano is referring only to the noun, not the title. So you could say Bush is the president, but should still address him as President Bush.

Right... I want to be the president of some country some day, but I'm not sure I want the responsibility of the President of the United States. I'd never known the lowercase president to have been capitalized.

[CookingWithGas]

Originally Posted by mwbrooks

Historically, two or more connected private networks would be called "an internet."

Historically, any network (not necessarily two connected ones) using TCP/IP protocol (not just any network) would be called an "internet" because that's the name coined for the protocol.

[Myglaren]

Is 'internet' a proper noun or not???

No. As every Yorkshireman knows, the correct term is T'internet.

[Chronos]

There are a lot of examples in astronomy, where some object was originally named as itself, and later served as the prototype for a class of objects which were given the same name. In such cases, the original one (often "ours", in some sense) gets capitalized, while the others are lowercase.

Sigh, that was a mouthful... Perhaps examples would be in order? One might say "We haven't seen a supernova anywhere in the Galaxy since the Middle Ages", in which case one is referring to our own galaxy, otherwise known as the Milky Way (which is really just a translation of "galaxy"). On the other hand, one might say "The Large Magellanic Cloud is a dwarf galaxy which orbits ours.", in which case "galaxy" is just used as a label for the general category, so it's lower-case. The same sort of distinction holds for "moon", "sun", and "universe" (in the latter case, the lower-case universes are usually theoretical models, like the de Sitter universe).

[Exapno Mapcase]

Originally Posted by Rhythmdvl

I missed this memo. I know there has always been a distinction between the general and the specific case, but when is it president Bush?

When I was growing up, one always capitalized words like President, either when referring to the leader of the country or the head of a company. Most style guides no loner do this. As mwbrooks noted, we still capitalize the title of the individual, as in President Bush or Vice President Cheney, but formal standard is to no longer use a capital when speaking of the president as an office rather than a person.

[mwbrooks]

Originally Posted by CookingWithGas

Historically, any network (not necessarily two connected ones) using TCP/IP protocol (not just any network) would be called an "internet" because that's the name coined for the protocol.

I think you might have that backwards. As I understand it, the internet concept (lowercase) came before the idea of a global Internet (capitalized), and the latter idea is what Internet Protocol was developed for and named after. Unfortunately I don't have the book I read that in any more, and the Wikipedia article is unclear on the terminology.

[Siam Sam]

Originally Posted by iturntoyou

So it's like Saturn has many moons, the Earth has one moon. If you're standing on the black earth, staring up at the Moon you can see Saturn's moon, if you had eyes like a telescope

Doesn't our m(M)oon have a name? Luna?

Not that I hear it called that all the time.

[Colophon]

I'm a copy editor by profession and I say it should be lower case. (And, more important, so does the house style where I work.) Using a capital letter looks needlessly prissy and old-fashioned IMHO, as if drawing attention to this new and out-of-the-ordinary wonder, the Internet!

It's become such a commonplace term that capping it up would be like writing "Television" or "Radio".

[CookingWithGas]

Originally Posted by mwbrooks

I think you might have that backwards. As I understand it, the internet concept (lowercase) came before the idea of a global Internet (capitalized), and the latter idea is what Internet Protocol was developed for and named after. Unfortunately I don't have the book I read that in any more, and the Wikipedia article is unclear on the terminology.

TCP/IP was substantially developed by 1983 and ARPA funded development of an implementation of it in ARPANET, which had gotten its start about 1969^1,2. It was this ARPANET that eventually became the Internet. TCP/IP came first.

________________________________________
1. Miller, Philip, TCP/IP Explained, Digital Press:Boston, 1997
2. http://smithsonian.yahoo.com/arpanet2.html

[CookingWithGas]

Originally Posted by Colophon

I'm a copy editor by profession and I say it should be lower case. (And, more important, so does the house style where I work.) Using a capital letter looks needlessly prissy and old-fashioned IMHO, as if drawing attention to this new and out-of-the-ordinary wonder, the Internet!

It's become such a commonplace term that capping it up would be like writing "Television" or "Radio".

There is always room for differences on matters of style, although I'm not following your rationale. "Internet" is not capitalized to draw attention to it as an out-of-the-ordinary wonder. It's to distinguish a particular network from others that are also properly known as internets, in the same way we use "White House." It is a white house, after all, but it's somehow different that all those other ones and we find it useful and important to make the distinction. Other network names are capitalized as well, such as the Automated Clearing House (US banking network). That a term becomes commonplace does not cause it to be demoted from its capitalization status.

Internet-with-a-capital-I is a proper name for a specific entity with well-defined boundaries and its own governance, such as the issuing of IP addresses and domain names (although domain names are not really part of the network definition). "Television" and "radio" are the names of generic media, like "book," not cohesive entities. Some people capitalize it to distinguish it from other networks of computers. But nothing says you have to.

[Rhythmdvl]

Originally Posted by Colophon

I'm a copy editor by profession and I say it should be lower case. (And, more important, so does the house style where I work.) Using a capital letter looks needlessly prissy and old-fashioned IMHO, as if drawing attention to this new and out-of-the-ordinary wonder, the Internet!

It's become such a commonplace term that capping it up would be like writing "Television" or "Radio".

Same here. One of my favorite (favourite?) style manuals starts off with British English as a baseline convention, then turns to the Chicago Manual, and finally presents a sizable chunk of in-house exceptions. [b]I[/i]nternet is one of them. Of note, the Economist does not capitalize. To someone who intuitively thinks it should be, it looks off.

Did I really just call a style manual "favorite"?

[levdrakon]

Originally Posted by Colophon

I'm a copy editor by profession and I say it should be lower case. (And, more important, so does the house style where I work.) Using a capital letter looks needlessly prissy and old-fashioned IMHO, as if drawing attention to this new and out-of-the-ordinary wonder, the Internet!

It's become such a commonplace term that capping it up would be like writing "Television" or "Radio".

Ooh, thank you.

Now I have to figure out how to tell Word to permanently ignore lower case internet.

[Colophon]

Originally Posted by levdrakon

Ooh, thank you.

Now I have to figure out how to tell Word to permanently ignore lower case internet.

Turn off the spellcheck-as-you-type feature or whatever it's called. In my experience, 90% of those annoying red lines are false positives, and would drive me mad if I ever used Microsoft Word (which I don't).

[CookingWithGas]

Originally Posted by levdrakon

Now I have to figure out how to tell Word to permanently ignore lower case internet.

Right-click on the word and select "Add To Dictionary."

[Alex_Dubinsky]

No one today uses the word "internet" to mean anything other than "the internet." As far as I know, no one ever has (except perhaps at the dawn). A collection of networks is called a WAN (wide-area network, made up of several LANs or local area networks). It can also be called an intranet (which means any substantial network that's separated from the internet) or just a network.

Of course, all these terms are loose and mixed up. For example, "intranet" is often used to refer to private websites on your network, not the network itself. Which is ironic, because it parallels the usage of "internet" to mean the "world wide web."

In any case, capitalization definately is about drawing attention to things, and some people will look at you weird if you draw attention to the internet in writing. Certainly if you're writing about technology. Admittedly, sometimes it feels like attention should be drawn, and I had to go back and erase a couple of capital I's when writing this post. It's too bad we can't go around capitalizing (or bolding or italicizing) things randomly in formal writing like we do online (or did back in the Day). It's so stifling.

[Siam Sam]

The Germans have it easier. They simply cap ALL nouns.

Still, forgive me if I continue to cap Internet, which I shall.

[Sigmagirl]

Originally Posted by Colophon

I'm a copy editor by profession and I say it should be lower case. (And, more important, so does the house style where I work.) Using a capital letter looks needlessly prissy and old-fashioned IMHO, as if drawing attention to this new and out-of-the-ordinary wonder, the Internet!

It's become such a commonplace term that capping it up would be like writing "Television" or "Radio".

I'm a copy editor by profession too. Alas, the newspaper for which I am a columnist insists on "Internet," so I must capitalize it. I hope this will soon cease.

[Alex_Dubinsky]

Originally Posted by Siam Sam

The Germans have it easier. They simply cap ALL nouns.

Originally Posted by about.com

The topic of German spelling reform (Rechtschreibreform) has been a hot topic of debate in recent years. Even before the current rules, issued in 1996, went into effect for schools and government entities in all the German-speaking countries in August 1998, there had been court cases and official protests.
But in all the wrangling over how German should be properly spelled there has been one prominent sacred cow: the capitalization of all nouns. German is the only language in the world that requires the capitalization of ALL nouns. There are only a few fringe groups calling for German capitalization rules similar to those in most other languages...Although Kleinschreibung had its advocates, the framers of the 1996 German spelling reforms felt it was simply not politically feasible to call for the elimination of noun capitalization. As it was, they had quite enough controversy without adding Groß- und Kleinschreibung to the list.

That's fn crazy.

[Colophon]

Originally Posted by Alex_Dubinsky

That's fn crazy.

That, and the verb until the end of every sentence leaving.

[Leaffan]

Originally Posted by Exapno Mapcase

When I was growing up, one always capitalized words like President, either when referring to the leader of the country or the head of a company. Most style guides no loner do this. As mwbrooks noted, we still capitalize the title of the individual, as in President Bush or Vice President Cheney, but formal standard is to no longer use a capital when speaking of the president as an office rather than a person.

I'm sure Exapno meant precedent. Or am I being whooshed by the responses?

[Exapno Mapcase]

Originally Posted by Leaffan

I'm sure Exapno meant precedent. Or am I being whooshed by the responses?

Excuse me, but huh?

[Leaffan]

Originally Posted by Exapno Mapcase

Excuse me, but huh?

Upon re-read: my mistake. Carry on. Sorry.

[Siam Sam]

Originally Posted by Alex_Dubinsky

That's fn crazy.

Not at all. I speak and write a little German, and I find it quaint and am fond of it. Plus if I don't know a word, at least I know if it's a noun or not.

[Siam Sam]

Originally Posted by Colophon

That, and the verb until the end of every sentence leaving.

Mark Twain wrote a wonderful essay about this and other oddities of the German language.

[Alex_Dubinsky]

I can also always tell if an unknown English word is a noun... The whole point of capitalization is to place emphasis. There's few ways that modern, anally-sanitized written language shows emphasis, and I think the German language is worse off for having spoiled capitalization.

And apparently, until the 20th century, the whole country used a single font?

[Siam Sam]

Originally Posted by Alex_Dubinsky

I can also always tell if an unknown English word is a noun... The whole point of capitalization is to place emphasis. There's few ways that modern, anally-sanitized written language shows emphasis, and I think the German language is worse off for having spoiled capitalization.

And apparently, until the 20th century, the whole country used a single font?

You VILL pay fuer your ARROGANTZ!

[Leaffan]

Originally Posted by Siam Sam

Not at all. I speak and write a little German, and I find it quaint and am fond of it. Plus if I don't know a word, at least I know if it's a noun or not.

I know a little German.



And there he is -----> (Midget in lederhosen.)




(Apologies to Top Secret.)

[Siam Sam]

Originally Posted by Leaffan

I know a little German.



And there he is -----> (Midget in lederhosen.)

And during the war, in the Resistance I cached a small Czech one time when they were hunting him.

[CookingWithGas]

Originally Posted by Colophon

That, and the verb until the end of every sentence leaving.

Big tangent but I once heard a joke about a German college professor who spewed on for 45 minutes with what seemed like a single sentence and then spent the last 5 minutes saying all the verbs.

[Green Bean]

Originally Posted by Alex_Dubinsky

No one today uses the word "internet" to mean anything other than "the internet." As far as I know, no one ever has (except perhaps at the dawn). A collection of networks is called a WAN (wide-area network, made up of several LANs or local area networks). It can also be called an intranet (which means any substantial network that's separated from the internet) or just a network.

Speaking as a non-tech person, I agree with this. In my experience temping, "local internets" are usually referred to as "the network" or even "the system." "Intranet" is sometimes used, as in "this is how you access the company's own intranet." but usually in practice it's one of the other two. "The internet" is only used to refer to the larger internet.

[Rhythmdvl]

[related]
Is anyone else in the habit of adding an apostrophe when referring to the 'net?

[Exapno Mapcase]

Originally Posted by Rhythmdvl

[related]
Is anyone else in the habit of adding an apostrophe when referring to the 'net?

I thought that went out when people stopped referring to a 'bus.

[Acsenray]

Originally Posted by Exapno Mapcase

(If president has, I guarantee internet will follow.).

?

What do you mean?

If "president" is ever used as a proper noun, then it would be capitalized. Otherwise, it's lower case. How has that changed?