contentious.com

I’ve been contemplating this move for awhile now, but Wired News beat me to the big announcement today.

AMY’S NEW RULE: From now on, as of this entry, CONTENTIOUS will no longer capitalize the words web, net, or internet.

Here’s why…

My reasons are much the same as those laid out by Wired News copy chief Tony Long. Basically, web, internet, and net are not really proper nouns, and they never have been. These words are common nouns that name a relatively new medium of communication. There is no sound grammatical reason to capitalize “web,” just like there is no sound grammatical reason to capitalize “radio” or “newspaper.”

In contrast, the term “World Wide Web” is indeed a proper noun, and on the rare occasions that I use that term I will capitalize it accordingly.

So where did all this capitalization come from? Long writes:

“True believers are fond of capitalizing words, whether they be marketers or political junkies or, in this case, techies. If It’s Capitalized, It Must Be Important. In German, where all nouns are capitalized, it makes sense. It makes no sense in English. So until we become Die Wired Nachrichten, we’ll just follow customary English-language usage.”

WHY I USED TO CAPITALIZE WEB, NET, AND INTERNET

I’ve developed the online style for CONTENTIOUS largely based on a generally fine publication, E-What? by EEI Press. This book says:

“When referring to the worldwide network of computer networks that communicate via TCP/IP, the word Internet is always capitalized. …It is a proper noun. …Web is capitalized when it stands alone, short for the proper noun World Wide Web. Web is also capitalized when it forms part of an open compound, as in Web technology, Web address [...etc.]

Those struck me as good arguments for awhile. But as I consider the point further, both “internet” and “web” refer to general concepts, not specific entities.

For instance, the concept of providing a common protocol that allows diverse computer systems to interact does not mean that there will always and forever be one and only “Internet.” Indeed, the Internet2 consortium is working to create a more secure and efficient internet. If it comes to pass, that specific creation would be a proper noun: Internet2. But in the big grammatical picture, it still would be just another internet.

Similarly, in the future there may be another incarnation of the web, somehow technologically distinct and separate from the web we use today. Just because something happens to be one-of-a-kind at the moment does not make its general description a proper noun.

Also, I based my earlier style decision on The Web Content Style Guide, another generally good and useful book by Gerry McGovern, Rob Norton, and Catherine O’Dowd. This book claims that internet and net should always be capitalized, but it doesn’t say why. It also advises that web should be capitalized when referring to the World Wide Web, but not when it’s used as an adjective (such as “web users.”)

Finally, I blame the generally lame but still widely cited Internet Guide and Glossary of my 2001 edition of the AP Stylebook. That publication instructs reporters and editors to capitalize internet and web – without offering any justification for that decision.

The bottom line is, language evolves. This evolution often happens in the direction of increasing complexity (new words, concepts, and habits of usage). However, this evolution also can – and should – mitigate increasing complexity with clarified simplicity. In this case, de-capitalizing words that really don’t need to be capitalized is a move toward grammatical simplicity.

Also, it’s simply easier to do the work of writing and editing if you have fewer words that need to be capitalized. That represents a very minor relief in my workload, but I’ll take it.