contentious.com

Back on Aug. 16, I announced that I’d decided to stop capitalizing internet, web, and net. This particular stylistic choice was publicly pioneered by Wired News copy chief Tony Long.

Not surprisingly, a bunch of readers complained. How dare I oppose the most popular editorial approach to this issue? Didn’t I, with all my experience in online media, grasp the fundamental significance which sets the (i/I?)nternet apart from other media, thus meriting capitalization? Didn’t I understand that this collection of connected computers has become so thoroughly analogous to a real space as to warrant coronation as a proper noun?

…Obviously, these people never noticed the title of this blog. (Yeah, go look – it’s right at the top of this page.) I am quite used to voicing unpopular opinions and controversial views. I’ve got a lifetime of experience in that field. So I stand by my editorial decision. Those unnecessary capitals will remain ditched.

I’m not alone in this opinion. NPR’s Fresh Air show just weighed in on my side. Listen to today’s commentary by linguist Geoff Nunberg, The Stylistic Concerns of the Internet. He echoes and amplifies Long’s and my decision far more eloquently than I certainly could have….

EXCERPTS FROM NUNBERG’S COMMENTARY:

“…Back in the 1920s people sometimes capitalized ‘the radio’ and ‘the cinema.’ But they stopped doing that when those media receded into the cultural background.”

“…People want to think of the internet as a place. We’ve been talking about the internet in a spatial way since the early days of cyberspace – which was always depicted as an open expanse, like an ocean, a plain, or a galaxy. And that spatial conception perisisted even as settlers started to stake out the territory, and the geography acquired features more typical of urban architecture, like portals, gateways, and sites.”

“…The spatial picture of the internet is one of those metaphorical frames that makes a technology easier to comprehend. It’s like like the trashcan icon on the computer desktop – a useful analogy, so long as you don’t think the sanitation guys are going to be clanging by on Tuesday morning to dump it out for you. There’s a difference between saying something is a ’space,’ and saying it’s a particular place. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t think of the internet as one of those ubiquitous presences like ‘the atmosphere’ or ‘the cosmos’ (none of them phrases we’re tempted to put in capital letters). Putting a capital ‘I’ on ‘internet’ implies something more than that. It turns the internet into a specific location; a city of bits where a single community is taking shape.”

“…The internet is no more a coherent community than the collection of travelers who happen to find themselves at Kennedy airport on a given afternoon on their way to or from Stuttgart, San Juan, or St. Louis. If the internet permits the illusion of community, it’s only because we don’t actually have to rub elbows with the rest of the travelers there.”

Seriously, do not miss Nunberg’s commentary. And you might want to check out his new book, too.