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

[Laurence Horn]

We're a bit inconsistent about uniqueness and capitalization.  Yes, P. F. Strawson wrote about expressions that "have grown capital letters", as in "the Church/Bank of England", thereby becoming something between true descriptions and proper names, but even with the classic bone of contention between him and Russell, we find both "the King of France" and "the king of France", and I'm not sure (since I don't know how to do the relevant i/Internet search) what the breakdown of upper- vs. lower-case usage is for "the President"/"the president".  (Presumably the former is more likely if we're talking about the commander-in-chief than the company or university C.E.O.)   It would be interesting to know if there's a general disparity in usage between the two countries (or others) that are known to be divided by a common language.  

LH

> On Apr 4, 2016, at 5:11 AM, Michael Quinion <michael.quinion at worldwidewords.org> wrote:
> 
> 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 (https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.worldwidewords.org_topicalwords_tw-2Dint1.htm&d=AwICaQ&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=wFp3X4Mu39hB2bf13gtz0ZpW1TsSxPIWYiZRsMFFaLQ&m=PzMd-z3pyeU0YzP5PWG_CIIvzMk0pJrsVSJUvpi-kKI&s=lkXx-TQqDwMTocZ0j9P9qQhYEsHIBKbU9b872Y3PrCQ&e= ) 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
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.worldwidewords.org&d=AwICaQ&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=wFp3X4Mu39hB2bf13gtz0ZpW1TsSxPIWYiZRsMFFaLQ&m=PzMd-z3pyeU0YzP5PWG_CIIvzMk0pJrsVSJUvpi-kKI&s=C4dcjYo7JoFASxv7AJBiWGXLNNw7VLwP_KIhbUAFGq0&e= 
> 
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