[Ads-l] AP: Internet -> internet and "to lowercase"

[Benjamin Barrett]

> On 3 Apr 2016, at 18:26, James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at NETSCAPE.COM> wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 2 Apr 2016 17:21:07 Zone-0700 Benjamin Barrett <mail.barretts at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> <begin quote>
> The AP has “internet” capitalized at 
> https://www.apstylebook.com/?do=ask_editor&pg=faq 
> <https://www.apstylebook.com/?do=ask_editor&pg=faq>; however, with their 
> 2016 Stylebook release, they will stop capitalizing it, as per a tweet 
> at http://bit.ly/1N3Qe6o <http://bit.ly/1N3Qe6o>. (Hopefully the rest of 
> the world will follow this trend, though they are getting a lot of flack 
> from people who seem to think it’s a proper noun.)
> <end quote>
> 
> Wrong.  There are two different nouns in question here.
> 
> "internet" with a lower-case i means any computer network which extends outside the owning organization, as contrasted with "intranet", a network which is used only within the organization.
> 
> "Internet" with a capital I means the network on which World Wide Web etc. operate.  It is a proper noun, and therefore capitalized, since there is only one Internet.  Note that it is properly referred to as "the Internet".
> 

Although I doubt I will change my opinion on this, is there evidence for such a difference?

Also, what’s the evidence that this is a proper noun? Typically, they don’t take articles and uniqueness doesn’t seem to mean very much (c.f. gravity, sky, sun, air, universe).

Benjamin Barrett
Formerly of Seattle, WA
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