Internet or internet?

The entire SitePoint office spent a good 20 minutes this afternoon debating whether Internet should have an uppercase “I” or not.

https://twitter.com/kylevermeulen/status/573372622995525632

Guess which side I’m on? :wink:

What do you think?

lol

I thought, “It’s a proper noun, capitalized of course.”
Then I read the Tweets :bird:

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As I see it, most certainly a capital “I”. Although it is virtual, it is most definitely a real “place” so a proper noun, which means it needs to be capitalized.

There is, believe it or not, even a Wikipedia article on Internet or internet.

Scott

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I lean towards “the Internet”. This (from Wikipedia) kind of sums it up for me:

… historically differentiated between the Internet and an internet …

The Internet is a specific internet, so to speak. It’s not a generic thing. Just as the indigenous people of each country are known as “aborigines”, the Australian Aborigines have a capital A because they are a specific culture that actually goes by that name.

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I also believe personally that “i” in internet should be a capital I, as it is known as global network. so it must be given capital initials

It’s Internet. For reasons explained above.

I think most people are just lazy and don’t bother capitalizing (guilty.)

From what I can gather, technically, it should be ‘Internet’. But in my guts that just feels wrong. So as much as it should be ‘Internet’, I’ll personally be sticking with ‘internet’… just to be difficult.

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IT people really scare me sometimes… :smirk:

Obviously it is Internet

It is a proper noun.

And there is only one!

There is no debate on proper English!

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For now…

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You’re being difficult? I just capitalize it because my word processor automatically corrects it! :smiley:

So I say that it should be with capital “I”… if only because I’m not going to fight against the autocorrector included with my word processor :stuck_out_tongue:

This is something that genuinely bothers me about languages - their continual evolution. While I certainly don’t want to speak in an old-timey way (“Why top of the morning to you, old chap!”) I do like things to stay a certain level of normal, “Internet” being one of them.

Popular use seems to be not capitalising the “I” so it’s certainly heading in the direction of becoming the “internet”, much like “through” is now “thru.” How I hate “thru” with a passion.

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You and me both :smile:

I don’t really write Internet enough to choose a side, so I think I’ll just refer to internet both ways to even things out each time i use it :smile:

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You’re such a rebel… not wanting to take sides! :stuck_out_tongue:

My current plan is to avoid using the word entirely (that should be pretty easy given I write for a site like SitePoint) and/or using it both ways and switching every now and again. That way I annoy everyone, but intermittently.

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@Adam personally I like “infobahn”, “information superhighway” and “hyperspace”.

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Infobahn is cool

A series of tubes?

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But do you have a plan B? :stuck_out_tongue:

If one is referring to the world wide network, the Internet, then it should be capitalized. On the other hand a generic inter connected wide area network could be a simple internet. But that is just my opinion.

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Off topic but I despise ‘thru’. But you know what I’ve started doing? And I hate it…

Being a Tumblr user, there seems to be a certain way of speaking/typing emerging. There’s a lot of ending sentences with ‘tho’ (though) and ‘rn’ (right now). There’s also a lot of ‘idk’ and ‘idc’. I do it, for shaaaame. Example:

‘idk and idc rn. i’m feeling really sick tho.’

I think the lowercasing is just …internet speak :wink: