Grammar

It’s Official: Internet is No Longer a Proper Name

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Last Updated on January 6, 2019

If you follow Associated Press Style for your writing, you no longer have to capitalize ‘internet.’

For years now, the Associated Press Style Guide has insisted that the internet (and the web, for that matter) should always be capitalized.

It was as if the AP Style Guide considered “the Internet” to be an actual place. To me, the internet (note the lowercase i there), is a thing, and a generic thing at that, since it’s actually made up of a series of computer networks and servers. (I don’t capitalize those either.)

I work for a company that hasn’t capitalized internet for about eight years. I don’t know that I’ve ever capitalized it here on this blog, though I don’t really care to go through more than 5,000 posts from the last dozen years to confirm that; let’s leave it at this: I can’t think of a reason that I’d have capitalized the word if it didn’t start a sentence.

AP editors released the change for internet and web ahead of a session at the the annual American Copy Editors Society’s conference, according to Poynter.

The AP itself announced the change in a Twitter post as well:

You might find yourself distracted by AP’s use of lowercase as a verb rather than an adjective, but don’t worry about that one. Merriam-Webster tells us lowercase has been in use as a verb, meaning to set type in lower rather than upper case letters, since 1908.

So why has this taken so long to change? Adam Nathaniel Peck of the New Republic said last year that pesky little the ahead of internet may be to blame:

The giveaway, say linguists, is that pesky little determiner that usually accompanies the word internet. ‘We use ‘the’ when we talk about the internet, and that perpetuates the usage of the uppercase,’ said Katherine Connor Martin, the head of U.S. English Dictionaries at Oxford University Press. It’s the difference between an internet and the Internet.

I never thought of it that way, to be honest. I suppose adding the “determiner”&nbsp ahead of the word does make it sound bigger than it actually should.

I went to the University of South Carolina which tried to separate itself (and its initials) from the University of Southern California by calling itself, “The USC.” This particular little the didn’t help my USC, however.

Anyway, I’m happy to see AP drop the capitalization of internet and web.

I just shudder to think what capitalization argument we’ll face next!

the authorPatrick
Patrick is a Christian with more than 30 years experience in professional writing, producing and marketing. His professional background also includes social media, reporting for broadcast television and the web, directing, videography and photography. He enjoys getting to know people over coffee and spending time with his dog.