Geek grammer question.
“The Internet” is a proper name for the worldwide internet that billions of people use. The usage is similar to Britons referring to “The Continent” when referring to mainland Europe. (It’s not just any internet, or any continent…).
Uncapitalized, “internet” refers to any set of connected networks, whether they are part of the worldwide Internet or not.
A thread from last year:
Repeating my post in the thread from last year, 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.
That is the historical view; I will duck the issue of whether it should continue to be capitalized.
It’s certainly capitalized in this news video which is obviously dated to pre September That Never Ended.
Compare: The White House vs. the white house down the street. When you are writing about a specifically named item, you capitalize. That’s why God created proper nouns and no other god did. Names have big juju.
I capitalise a lot of nouns; it is (I believe) a Victorian convention that allowed the reader’s eye to be drawn to Important Or Notable Things in the text.
Also, there’s really only one The Internet- at least, there’s only one Internet that the average person will think of- and so, like Parliament House, it gets capitalised.
AFAIK – very much debated still. I’ve seen some style guides that capitalize and some that don’t. Personally, I think both internet and web have become such generic terms that they really can’t be considered proper nouns any more.
That’s why “I” is capitalized, as there can be only one, whereas “you” or “he” can refer to any. At least that’s how it seems to Me.
No, “I” is capitalized because “i” is easy to lose in manuscripts full of run-together words and inkspots. After reliable typesetting became the rule, and even handwritten documents were mostly well-spaced, the capital “I” simply didn’t go away. I rather suspect the same reasons apply to “why did people used to capitalize so many words that don’t seem to deserve it?”
That is sort of the critical point. They are not generics. They might be commonly used, but that is like saying The Earth is a common term and thus a generic. None of them are generic because there is only one of each of them. A commonly referenced name is not the same as generic name.
The Internet is the world wide interconnection of computers using TCP/IP. If your computer is on The Internet, it will have been allocated a unique address (or at least your connection device will have so allocated.) The World Wide Web, or just The Web, is the set of all services reachable via the http protocol on The Internet.
You can have internets, and you can have webs. Typically in secure areas, or just very lonely places. These are generics.
Am I being whooshed by the misspelling in the op?
Nah. The schwa phoneme in typical American dialects simply does not do enough to reinforce the actual spelling. The same thing happens, a lot, with the word separate.