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

[Michael Quinion]

On 04/04/2016 02:26, James A. Landau wrote:
> 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".
>
> Before the name "Internet" was adopted, the network was known as the ARPAnet, after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which was the original sponsor of the network.  The software used to run the Internet is called TCP/IP, which stands for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, all five words capitalized.

I wonder if this is too subtle a distinction for the general public. The 
capitalisation of /internet/ has varied during its history but began to 
be lower-cased in earnest from about 2000, particularly in the UK. I 
wrote about this when /Wired/ magazine decided to go lower-case in 2004 
(http://www.worldwidewords.org/topicalwords/tw-int1.htm) and pointed out 
that it was then fast becoming a generalised term for a communications 
medium, like /television/ and /radio//./ AP is rather belatedly falling 
in line with a widely accepted convention.

-- 
Michael Quinion, World Wide Words
http://www.worldwidewords.org


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