Is it just me, or are the spellings of Internet-related words changing before our very eyes? I mean, let's start right there with the word "Internet". In the early days, the "Internet" was the Internet. It was a proper noun. (There now is the entire limit of my knowledge of grammar.) These days--a mere 15 years later, it seems that it is now the "internet". In trying to figure out whether the world is changing or people are getting sloppy with their spelling, I headed out to Google to check a few web sites and suddenly got distracted: Google asked do I mean "web site" or "website". Suddenly I knew how Louis Black feels: Ooooooowww, it felt like my head was going to explode!
Web site or website? In the 90s it was ALWAYS two words, but now it seems to be missing the space and turns up as one word. Is this a grammatical attack or is it an effort to save millions of people from hitting the spacebar a few times less per month?
Thank God, "spacebar" is one word or my head would have exploded before finishing this sentence.
So what's the deal? How can any self-respecting blogger figure out what is correct or what is perceived as bad grammar. I ain't never been a bad speller before.
So I turned to Wikipedia for some quick information and was greeted by this discussion of "Internet capitalization":
In formal usage, the word Internet is traditionally treated as a proper noun and written with a capital first letter. . .In English grammar, proper nouns are capitalized. However, critics argue that some things that are unique yet distributed, such as "the power grid", "the telephone network", and even "the sky", are not considered proper nouns, and are thus not capitalized.
Examples of media publications and news outlets that capitalize the term include The New York Times, the Associated Press, Time, The Times of India, Hindustan Times. In addition, many peer-review journals and professional publications, such as Communications of the ACM, and the American Psychological Association, in its electronic media spelling guide, capitalize "Internet."
Since the advent of the 'dot-com' era, a significant number of publications have switched to using internet. Among them are The Economist, the Financial Times, The Times (of London), and the Sydney Morning Herald. As of 2005, most publications using internet appear to be located outside of North America although one American news source, Wired News, has adopted the lowercase spelling. Throughout the English-speaking world, including North America, lower-case "internet" is more prevalent than Internet in informal sources, such as blogs, personal web pages, and chat rooms.[citation needed]
In the Internet standards community, which includes the IETF, usage historically differentiated between the common noun (lower case first letter) and the proper noun (upper case). That is, "the Internet" referred to the Internet, while "an internet" (lowercase i) referred to any internetwork or multiple inter-connected Internet Protocol networks.
Another example is IBM's TCP/IP Tutorial and Technical Overview (ISBN 0-7384-2165-0) from 1989, which stated that:
The words internetwork and internet is [sic] simply a contraction of the phrase interconnected network. However, when written with a capital "I", the Internet refers to the worldwide set of interconnected networks. Hence, the Internet is an internet, but the reverse does not apply. The Internet is sometimes called the connected Internet.
I'm sure glad that's settled! Lots of good information and hyperlinks, but why didn't the Wikipedia entry just say that people are using both these days and leave it at that? Or are they letting me choose to follow the New York Times or The Economist, the Associated Press or Wired News? Oh my God, Louis, I feel the pressure building again!
OK, so maybe the evolution of "website" and "web site" will be more clear and easier to understand.
Dictionary.com cites this entry from the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Houghton Mifflin 2006):
web·site or Web site
(wěb'sīt')
n.
A set of interconnected webpages, usually including a homepage,
generally located on the same server, and prepared and maintained as a
collection of information by a person, group, or organization.
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Much easier to grasp that explanation, which also conveniently brings us to the last spelling battle: Is it "email" or "e-mail?" It seems that the hyphen is getting squeezed out here too, and not one English teacher or grammatical know-it-all is crying "foul." However, before I accept the dicta in the Usage Note above, I need to confirm with another source.
So over to the dictionary at NetLingo.com--a site known for understanding text messaging acronyms and more. The NetLingo dictionary lists it both ways because, well, people spell it both ways. Our old friend Wikipedia introduces a third option--"eMail"--as an original spelling of the word, but I haven't seen that spelling in years. Once again, Wikipedia lists competing dictionary and style guides that advocate one spelling or the other. Help me stay calm, Louis!
Finally, I found The Fiction Desk, a blog for fiction writers that took a novel approach to the issue. (Yes, pun intended!) Although the blog looked at the spellings in various dictionaries, it also looked at how leading technology and media companies use the word:
- Apple uses email
- Microsoft usually uses e-mail but sometimes email
- Adobe uses both
- Google uses email
- Yahoo uses email
- CNN uses e-mail
- Perhaps maintaining the famous “BBC balance”, the BBC website uses e-mail within news stories but seems to use email on the rest of the site
- The New York Times uses e-mail
- direct.gov.uk uses email
- usa.gov uses both
In short, there is no one right answer. All that research, but I'd be right anyway I decide to spell it. Both spellings are correct. That's not the way it was when I was in school. Maybe that's what's wrong with America today. Or maybe that's what's right with America today?
Oooooow, Louis, my head is about to explode!
