AP Style Alert: Don't Capitalize Internet and Web Anymore (poynter.org) 218
Saturday the Associated Press announced they're changing the rules in their influential stylebook: the words "internet" and "web" should no longer be capitalized. "The changes reflect a growing trend toward lowercasing both words," their standards editor told Poynter.org, pointing out that both words "have become generic terms." Words tend to be lowercased as their usage becomes more common, and Poynter.org points out that "In 2011, e-mail became email... in 2010, Web site became website." In 2013 the AP even revised their usage of the term "illegal immigration," advising "use illegal only to refer to an action, not a person: illegal immigration, but not illegal immigrant," as part of a push towards'ridding the Stylebook of labels."
Internet != internet (Score:5, Interesting)
There are many possible "internets", networks of interlinked networks. The "Internet" is one of them, by far the largest. That is, "Internet" is a proper noun, in the same way that "Bill", "Associated Press", and "Monica" are.
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There are many possible "internets", networks of interlinked networks. The "Internet" is one of them, by far the largest. That is, "Internet" is a proper noun, in the same way that "Bill", "Associated Press", and "Monica" are.
Not anymore, not in common usage, and that is why the AP are changing their guide.
Re: Internet != internet (Score:2)
Then they should be informed of their error. Just because something is in common usage doesn't make it right. An internet is a network. The Internet is, well, the Internet. Literally (meaning literally, and not figuratively, which is currently the common usage!)!
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Such as when people use "your" rather than "you're" then scream bloody murder when people point out their incorrect usage.
"Everyone knows what you mean," they say, not grasping that if they're lazy in the correct use of language, what else are they lazy at and why should someone take them seriously?
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Then they should be informed of their error.
How do you propose to do that and make it stick? When was the last time the geek engaged in a war of words and won?
Re: Internet != internet (Score:4, Insightful)
It is common to see people inappropriately use "to" when they mean "too".
It is common to see people inappropriately use "it's" when they mean "its".
Common != Correct
Re: Internet != internet (Score:3, Insightful)
In this case, no. Common usage is incorrect. The 2 terms "internet" and "Internet" have specific meanings. In this case, the majority are not aware of the differences as they are technical in nature. Hence the "common usage". If AP did their research and talked to a few people in the field, they would then know the reasons they shouldn't change. "Common usage" is not always correct, is just common. It means most people are wrong. Instead of following them, they should try to educate them, or we'll e
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"Common usage" is not always correct, is just common. It means most people are wrong.
Which begs the question, if most people agree on a common definition for a certain term or phrase doesn't that make it ultimately the right definition? I mean what good is your knowledge of a language if you are unable to communicate with the people who speak it?
This is a problem in any uncontrolled language like English.
Now are you going to point out the incorrect use of begs the question even though the vast majority (dare I say everyone) completely and totally understood the exact meaning I was conveying
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No it does not. Common usage simply defines what is popular.
Re:Internet != internet (Score:5, Interesting)
Although "internet" is not common, I strongly disagree that the common use is not as a proper noun. The Internet is a place, much like Europe, Mars, Rome, or whatever.
When speaking of multiple linked networks, I speak of intranets or private networks, but if something is on the Internet, it's addressable in one, clear, named, identifiable space, and that space is called the Internet.
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Not really. Would you capitalize the "Multiverse"?
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Are you suggesting that the Internet comprises all networks everywhere?
Re: Internet != internet (Score:2)
That would be the Multinet, surely!
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By common usage, aks should be an accepted spelling for ask. It's been in use far longer than internet with no capital I.
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Should we keep capitalizing "Web" to avoid people from fearing a giant spider that can weave one as wide as the world?
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I agree, one could produce a world wide web of many things. We currently have one world wide web of internet sites and it has a name, and that name is the World Wide Web. We often shorten such things in common usage and simply refer to this as the Web.
Many things fly and could be called a flyer. The Wright Brothers made something the flew and they called it Flyer.
There's a lot of things that shuttle things back and forth. NASA built a vehicle that did this and we call it Shuttle.
Perhaps another way to p
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I don't disagree that what you say is what the rule currently is but taking a step back for a moment, language can be expressed in two forms: written and spoken. When speaking, there is no difference an upper and lower case letter. It's rare to hear anyone complain that the spoken form of some sentence is more ambiguous or otherwise problematic than the written equivalent. In this particular case, you'd say "the internet" or "an internet" to distinguish the two meanings. The letter case is unnecessary.
Re:Internet != internet (Score:5, Insightful)
When speaking, there is no difference an upper and lower case letter. It's rare to hear anyone complain that the spoken form of some sentence is more ambiguous or otherwise problematic than the written equivalent.
Writing lacks all sorts of expressive capabilities that can be conveyed through speech. Cues like subtle rises and falls around words, highlighting a word through volume or pitch, etc. can all help us parse where a sentence begins/ends or to know that a specific word is referring to a person rather than a common noun with the same sound. We don't have those cues in writing.
Why we still use capital letters?
I'm not really a linguist, but you might as well ask why we still use punctuation, or why we put spaces between words, or why we spell things in the ridiculous mess that is English-language spelling. They are conventions. Language is about communication, and effective communication requires common understanding -- which relies on convention. We learn to parse patterns based on those conventions. When those conventions change suddenly, it's more difficult for people familiar with them to parse things, and the communication is less effective.
That's the very broad general answer for all such things.
For the specific notion of capital letters, they are used (and have been used for over a millennium) as cues for parsing language. They occur at the beginning of sentences, which is a signal to parse a new phrase. They occur for proper names (people, countries, specific places, etc.), which is a cue to differentiate a word from any "common noun" associations. They therefore provide a shade of meaning that is different in many contexts. Often such meanings could be determined from context too, but the capital letter is a shortcut that immediately identifies the word as a "proper" noun, which means it generally falls into a few specific categories. In cases of ambiguity, someone parsing a sentence can immediately know that the word is a person, or a specific place, or whatever.
Some other languages have other conventions for capitals that make this parsing role exceptionally clear -- see German, for example, where ALL nouns are capitalized. Is it "necessary"? Obviously other languages do without it. But for Germans, that is a grammatical cue to the function of the word in a sentence. In English, capitals also provide such cues, just for specific types of nouns, rather than all of them. But the meaning is still helpful in many contexts.
Could we do without capital letters? Of course. Ancient languages often did, and various scripts around the world don't really have an equivalent. But again, it's kind of like asking why we put spaces between words. Youcanreadasentencewithoutthem,andit'softenstraightforwardtoparseasentence. But the spaces make it quicker in some circumstances with less cognitive load for those familiar with the convention.
They seem like an unnecessary relic (another example: the difference between ',' and ';') that we should be working to simplify out of the written form of our language.
Commas and semicolons are completely different punctuation marks, and they imply completely different relationships about the words or phrases around them. (The one case of similar usage is in lists that are subdivided, but this isn't a particularly common use case. Even there, the point is that the semicolon helps delineate between comma-delineated lists of items.)
Could we eliminate semicolons? Of course, but then we'd lose some subtle meaning and parsing possibilities. We could eliminate punctuation altogether too, but it would be even worse.
We might as well ask why we have dozens of words for different shades of "blue." Why not just call them all "blue"? Well, in some contexts it helps to clarify things, and sometimes that lack of ambiguity can assist in parsing what someone else means (e.g., when trying to locate an item on
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I'm not really a linguist, but you might as well ask why we still use punctuation, or why we put spaces between words, or why we spell things in the ridiculous mess that is English-language spelling.
So close. You almost had it. The 'ridiculous mess' that is English-language spelling is also an optimization of cognitive load, just as capitalization and punctuation are. When humans read, we recognize the whole word, not individual letters. English spelling puts a greater cognitive load on the writer in order to significantly reduce the cognitive load on the reader. We could regularize the spelling of all homophones, simplifying writing—and sabotaging reading. Sabotaging it so badly that we wo
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"The 'ridiculous mess' that is English-language spelling is also an optimization of cognitive load, just as capitalization and punctuation are."
You make it sound like it was a conscious decision to spell English the way it is. It's not. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org] .
Of course, once you have the spelling, good writers will use its pecularities to their advantage, but even then I doubt that present-day English writings would be harder to read in a more phonetic spelling system - for someone who was raise
Re: Internet != internet (Score:2)
It's an interesting comment and something I've thought about over the years. In fact, I think we do speak with "capitalisation", although we aren't consciously aware of it. When saying a proper noun, there tends to be a slight change in pronouncing, inflection, and/or tone, or in the separation of the words. If you say these two sentences aloud, you may hear a difference:
I'm going to the john
I'm going to see John.
It's something I sometimes notice when I'm listening for it. Speech is very complex - we ca
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I can't find the quote this made me think of right now, but it was a character accusing another not of being sarcastic, but of speaking some word in italics (IIRC Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax).
I just found some similar quotes from other books, like from "Men at Arms"
He could think in italics. Such people need watching. Preferably from a safe distance.
..or taking it even further, from his scifi-gamer YA book "Only You Can Save Mankind" when Kristy argues with Mr Patel the game shop owner about returning her "d
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the girl's voice had a kind of penetrating quality, like a corkscrew. When she spoke in italics, you could hear them. 'Oh, no. You can't say that. Because how can I tell if it works without trying it? That comes under the Sale of Goods Act (1983).' The awed watchers were astonished to see a slightly hunted look in Mr Patel's eyes. Up until now he'd never met anyone who could pronounce brackets.
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I believe it was John Quarterman's 1990 book "The Matrix" (seriously, and you thought the Wachowski brothers, er sisters, er.... made it up huh?) that coined the term "the Internet", emphasizing and classifying the distinction between "an internet" and "the Internet" in precisely this way. Common usage of not capitalizing is a consequence of many millions of people not knowing the distinction.
The distinction is essentially the same as "a man" vs. "the Man", which was a popular distinction in my youth. Pe
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AP, of course they're wrong (Score:3)
Uhm no, there is a distinction. "A internet" (lowercase) is a bunch of interconnected networks, "the Internet" (capitalized) is the currently biggest one.
Because of the growth of the latter, the former meaning is far less common, but it still exists.
Re:AP, of course they're wrong (Score:5, Funny)
I don't think there's any point in reading the rest, is there?
Re: AP, of course they're wrong (Score:2)
Ever hear of a typo...? Allow for some mistakes, as humans aren't perfect, and read the comment for the content therein.
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that would be the parochial view I guess?
If the AP wants to write about "the moon", I'm going to ask "Which one?" same for "the sun". You could say that it is only proper to capitalize Luna or Sol, but if you are going to use moon interchangeably with Luna, then you ought to maintain the capitalization to indicate that.
I'm good with this. (Score:5, Insightful)
And why is "illegal immigrant" incorrect? Yes, the act of immigrating illegally is illegal. It puts the person who commits that crime into the condition of being an illegal immigrant. If someone is squatting in a house where they don't have permission to live, they are illegally residing in that house - they are illegal residents of that house. It's not like there's any semantic confusion on the subject. We talk very reasonably about people being legal residents, visa-holding travelers, etc. A phrase which defines their nature and status is perfectly reasonable. Someone either is, or is not an immigrant, and either is or is not such in keeping with immigration law. Immigration is a process 100% defined by law. One is either doing it legally, or not. Their status after doing it is within the provisions of the law, or outside it. They are legally residing in the country, or they are doing so illegally.
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Web and Internet are capitalized because they both are proper nouns. Not capitalizing them doesn't make sense. It's like not capitalizing Mike or Angela, or not capitalizing Chicago or Detroit. People, places, and things (and adjectives derived from them) are capitalized.
Re:I'm good with this. (Score:4, Insightful)
I like the German practice of capitalizing all nouns, can we adopt it as the standard instead of this movement away from capitalizing proper nouns?
Re: I'm good with this. (Score:2)
*dog
*yard
*laptop
*network
Winter is correct. All seasons have capitals. The rest are not proper nouns. We aren't German.
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Winter is not correct. Not in their usage.
Citation: http://www.write.com/writing-g... [write.com]
It's okay - I could have sworn I was taught to capitalize them in school. However, they are not capitalized. I learned this from a Grammar Nazi. It turns out, they're correct.
Re:I'm good with this. (Score:5, Insightful)
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As it said in the summary, referring to illegal immigration rather than illegal immigrants is an effort to avoid labeling people. While it is a technically correct description, there is more to language that technical specificity and precision. When discussing politically and emotionally charged subjects, labeling people as "a something or other", especially when referring to a group of people serves to subconsciously dehumanise them in the minds of the reader. Labelling people enables a cognitive shortcut
Re:I'm good with this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Or maybe, just possibly, the point is that we use such labels when they are contextually useful? When we're talking about choices of haircut, immigration status isn't particularly meaningful. When we're talking about whether or not someone is benefiting from their presence in the US without doing the things that other law-abiding people did in order to get those benefits, mentioning the fact that they are in the country illegally is completely appropriate.
Why SHOULD someone who's decided to skip the line and avoid the legal requirements of proper immigration get empathy from those they're cheating? What's lazy and stereotyping about calling someone what they actually are, when the context of the discussion directly relates to their lawbreaking and what they get out of their choice to be such
You've got your laziness label aimed at the wrong problem. The laziness comes from confusing race with culture, or confusing culture with personal choices to act. Those who use a label to describe the legal circumstances that someone deliberately chose to put themselves in aren't talking race, or culture, or gender or any of the other lights-progressives'-hair-on-fire PC third-rail topics. They're talking about a CHOICE people have made to break the law. Just like when they choose to hold up a liquor store or steal a car or profit from inside trading. That doesn't make them "other" in any sense other than what the phrase explicitly addresses: their choice to obey the law, or not. Have you chosen to break federal immigration law? No? Then you are in one category, and the people who HAVE chosen to break those laws are in another.
The real intellectual laziness and moral cowardice comes from trying to blur that distinction in order to avoid the personal discomfort of actually identifying someone's decision to break the law for what it is. The real question is: why does someone become uncomfortable identifying someone's actions for what they demonstrably are? Usually, it's because they're too craven to come out and say what they really want: open borders and a generous welfare state for anyone who shows up. Those who want that in the US are several years too slow watching how those policies have been turning out elsewhere.
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They're talking about a CHOICE people have made to break the law.
That's what I'm arguing for. Talking about the choice, not talking about a person as if they are nothing but that choice. "People who chose to illegally enter the country" for instance is a term that is explicit, and conveys the facts of the matter accurately, and doesn't blur any lines about what has happened or who is responsible. The term "Illegal Immigrant" while perfectly accurate in terms of categorising the legal status of the individual, omits the reminder that these are people being discussed, not
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Why SHOULD someone who's decided to skip the line and avoid the legal requirements of proper immigration get empathy from those they're cheating?
For the same reason that a black woman who decided to sit at the front of the bus or a black man who ignored the "no coloreds" sign at the sandwich shop should get empathy.
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Usually, it's because they're too craven to come out and say what they really want: open borders and a generous welfare state for anyone who shows up.
No, I'm very pro-immigration and very anti-welfare. And I'm not craven about it at all; I speak up about it pretty frequently.
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What, you're calling all the "Travelers" or Hispanic people "bank robbers" now? /s
(Sadly, I have to add the /s for sarcasm. There are people who would completely not understand.)
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First, check your pomposity.
I have no idea what you're talking about. I think you're projecting a tone onto what I'm saying.
Don't want to be called a bank robber? Don't rob a bank.
The trouble is the term "bank robber" possibly carries some unsubstantiated implications, and is a placeholder for subconscious caricatures. For example it conjures up an image of someone who habitually robs banks. If you're an accomplice in a bank robbery when you're 18, but you get caught, reform your character and never rob a bank again, being referred to as "a bank robber" gives an unwarranted impression that
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As it said in the summary, referring to illegal immigration rather than illegal immigrants is an effort to avoid labeling people. While it is a technically correct description, there is more to language that technical specificity and precision. When discussing politically and emotionally charged subjects, labeling people as "a something or other", especially when referring to a group of people serves to subconsciously dehumanise them in the minds of the reader. Labelling people enables a cognitive shortcut that prunes any human attributes outside those implied by the label, and transforms them from "a human like me with complex motivitations and someone whom i could empathise with" to "outsiders that aren't like me and could be a threat and doesn't deserve any empathy, because all they are is [whatever label]".
While on some level I agree with you, I think you can take this too far. It's one thing to use a word for bigoted purposes and stereotypes, but there are sometimes that "specificity and precision" you mention is relevant.
There are some people who seem to use the word "illegal immigrant" as a kind of code for "lazy Mexican." In that case, I completely agree with your objections. If you're commenting on some people you see sitting over on the other side of the bar, and just refer to them casually as "ill
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Lazy Illegal Immigrant?
Seriously? Have you seen those folks pick fruits and veggies? Man, they're less lazy than almost every legal citizen I know that's more than second generation citizen. Those folks work hard.
They're criminals, but they're some damned hard working criminals - for shit wages too. If they were lazy, we'd get rid of them. Hell, even the legal migrants are damned hard workers. One of the hardest workers I had working for me was a second generation citizen with Pakistani heritage. (See what
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I agree that the euphemism treadmill does seem like a perpetual losing prospect, it does seem to be that each euphemism is just a fresh label that will eventually collect the baggage of the previous label.
But I would argue that referring to a person as "a person who has (x characteristic)" or a group of people as "people who have (x characteristic)" is a way of talking about people in the context of the relevant characteristic without removing the crucial context that they are a human being the same as us r
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Euphemism Treadmill. - I like that. A teacher sent a letter to our local newspaper with a copy of some recent instructions from the school board "Please refrain from using words such as retarded or mentally retarded as some people find these offensive. Instead use cognitive impairment or developmentally delayed." The best part, she included similar instructions she had received 25 years ago "Please refrain from using words such as slow or simple as some people find these offensive. Instead use retarded or m
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If you have immigrated illegally to a country, you lead your life in that country as far from the state as possible. You don't pay any taxes directly, you don't have a bank account under your name and address, you don't have a house registered to your name. Your whole life is illegal. If somebody steals from you or threatens you, you can't get the police, because the police would then send you back to where you came from. If your employer doesn't give you a minimal wage, you can't protest. If there is an ac
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It never made sense, to me, to capitalize "web" or "internet," so this is just finally getting it right. I do find "website" to be silly, though. It makes no more sense than "constructionsite" or "landingsite" or "accidentsite."
Using the word site is a flawed analogy in the first place, you can change landing site but you don't move the landing site, it's the new site as opposed to the old. A quick search for "this (web site|website|site) has moved" returns 270,000 hits, in practice it's more like the addre
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And "illegal immigrant" is correct. The press h
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Internet and Web are capitalized because they refer to one specific internet or web, thus making them proper nouns. The best non-technical example is "mother". If you're talking about mothers in general, it's not capitalized: "A mother's job is never done." If you're talking about one specific mother, it's a proper noun and thus capitalized. "I wanted to have chocolate, but Mother said it would spoil my dinner." (Referring specifically to your mother.)
Nope. Do you say, "I've got to put more money in a bank so I can save for a house" ... but then also say, "I"ve got to stop by my Bank in order to make a deposit." No, you don't. And I don't know anybody who types thusly: "My Mother and Father have been married for twenty years." Because those are NOT proper nouns. Though there are ways in which capitalizing such words make sense: as in, "I'm going to pour more tea. Can I offer you some, Mom?" Because you are substituting that word for their name while di
Please don't do that (Score:2)
The Web and the Internet are two nouns that have a meaning beyond "some interwoven stuff" and "a network of networks". Proper capitalization of proper nouns is important to retain the meaning and spirit of a sentence! For example, take the lowercase sentence
"i had to help my uncle jack off a horse"
Capitalization changes everything!
They don't know what they're talking about (Score:2)
We can call it "the international internet network as governed by IETF, ICANN, ARIN etc." or "the AP doesn't know what they're talking about space", or "the Internet" for short.
I think maybe they just don't know that there is a concept of governance and organization which goes in to creating the Internet, and they think it's some vague ungoverned medium for communication, like sound through the air.
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It most likely wouldn't have a pause in spoken speech, "Uncle Jack" being treated as a single unit in this case. Replace it mentally with "Dad" or "little sister" and you'll see there's no pause. If it was "Jack, my uncle," then there would be appropriate pauses.
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I think that it would also depend on a couple of other things. The reader OR listener's familiarity with the subject and how one intended to express it later in the same subject.
"I'm going to drive my uncle, 'Jack's," car to the coast for him this weekend. Would you like to ride down and meet him? He's my uncle and he's pretty cool. My uncle and I have spent a lot of time together, back before you and I met."
vs.
"Hey, I'm going to Uncle Jack's, it should be a good drive. Want to go see him?"
In the latter cas
Modish but foolish (Score:5, Informative)
I can see how this decision fits in with modern fashion. The whole idea of a proper noun seems to grate - perhaps it clashes with the pervasive inverted snobbery of our culture. Many people's forum handles lower-case ordinary names, subtly suggesting that they are more sophisticated than old-fashioned upper-cased names.
As others have pointed out, there is in practice only one Internet: so it should be "the Internet". There are of course many intranets, and you can talk about different partial internets; but if they are not part of the Internet, the usage is merely confusing; and if they are part of the Internet, why use the same name for the whole and a part of it?
As for the Web, it was invented and freely given to the world by Tim Berners-Lee and his colleagues at CERN. Sir Tim has always emphasized that it should be both unique and world-wide, hence the proper name "the World Wide Web".
Here is his authoritative explanation:
Q: How in fact do you spell World Wide Web?
A: It should be spelled as three separate words, so that its acronym is three separate "W"s. There are no hyphens. Yes, I know that it has in some places been spelled with a hyphen but the official way is without. Yes, I know that "worldwide" is a word in the dictionary, but World Wide Web is three words.
I use "Web" with a capital W to indicate that it is an abbreviation for "World Wide Web". Hence, "What a tangled web he wove on his Web site!".
Often, WWW is written and read as W3, which is quicker to say. In particular, the World Wide Web consortium is W3C, never WWWC.
Q: Why did you call it WWW?
A: Looking for a name for a global hypertext system, an essential element I wanted to stress was its decentralized form allowing anything to link to anything. This form is mathematically a graph, or web. It was designed to be global of course. (I had noticed that projects find it useful to have a signature letter, as the Zebra project at CERN which started all its variables with "Z". In fact by the time I had decided on WWW, I had written enough code using global variables starting with "HT" for hypertext that W wasn't used for that.). Alternatives I considered were "Mine of information" ("Moi", c'est un peu egoiste) and "The Information Mine ("Tim", even more egocentric!), and "Information Mesh" (too like "Mess" though its ability to describe a mess was a requirement!). Karen Sollins at MIT now has a Mesh project.
https://www.w3.org/People/Bern... [w3.org]
Re: Modish but foolish (Score:2)
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ok, that makes good sense. from now on i too shall dispense with the wasteful and tiring capital letters, even when spelling names like usa, eu, nato and ibm. maybe next week we can get rid of the annoying punctuation marks and spacing.
Or Headline Words ! (Score:3, Insightful)
Doesn't that look stupid. Why would those words have capitals? They are not names of anything that require a capital, they are just ordinary words. Why can't Slashdot get in step with the majority of publishers in this century who eschew excess capitalization in headlines? Such headlines can be very confusing, but worse- they smack of the hype that publishers in the 19th century thought necessary.
Turn the tables on the ap (Score:3)
The associated press deserves the style that gets hacked upon them.
Probably because most people didn't realize they s (Score:3, Interesting)
Proper nouns (Score:3)
There is only one Internet right now, just like there is only one Earth and one Universe.
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I see you capitalized Internet2 as well.
Maybe we'll have an Earth2 one day too, and we'll capitalize that one too. Just like we still capitalize Edward II
The classification system is too arbitary (Score:3)
you can't just say something is capitalized or not based on how commonly used it is otherwise we're always going to be dealing with confusion. In certain segments a given term is going to be used a lot and in others it won't. So would it be reasonable for one to capitalize and the other to not? Who takes priority? And what are you telling someone when you do or don't capitalize? Are you signaling familiarity or are you signaling ignorance of what should or shouldn't be capitalized?
The whole premise is bad.
Look. The confusion happened because people didn't understand that saying "the internet" is like saying "the ocean" or "the forest". Now if you specify a given service like "Slashdot" then that's supposed to be capitalized as a proper noun. However "the web" doesn't get capitalized for the same reason you don't capitalize "the mountains". Cite a specific mountain or mountain range... you know... use a proper noun and you have something you can capitalize. However, the internet and the web were never proper nouns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Now you could say that the global internet is a distinct network and thus citing it for a proper noun designation is appropriate. However, there is only one internet just as there is only one ocean (All oceans on Earth are contiguous bodies of water. There is no ocean that I cannot sail to from any other ocean.).
Part of the mistake might have been citing the internet as only being one place. Perhaps it would help the classification people to understand that the internet while perceived as a single network is actually a compilation of many systems across every inhabited continent in the world. Collectively it is a singular but so are all the oceans collectively "the ocean".
It's not like (Score:2)
the Associated Press had that much credibility to begin with.
Upper case never made sense (Score:3)
In my humble opinion, upper-case Internet never made sense. It never were a proper name. I have treated it on par with the telephone network or the electrical grid.
In both these cases, a similar distinction to the one between intranets and the internet is possible.
--
virve
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Wrong, the Oxford English Dictionary, the W3C, the IETF, and ICANN disagree with you. It is a proper noun.
stylebookz (Score:3)
Irony (Score:2)
AP Style Alert: Don't Capitalize Internet and Web Anymore
Did they say anything about pointlessly capitalising words in headlines?
labels on criminals are good (Score:2)
Criminals that have violated immigration laws can certainly be labeled as illegal immigrants, illegals, invading aliens, etc.
The AP shouldn't be pandering to the interests of lawbreakers
No (Score:2)
Cry me an Ocean? (Score:2)
There are an unbelievable number of white houses, but only one White House. I can dig up lots of earth from my backyard, but could I destroy Earth? We're obsessed with medicine and pills, but only one has the distinction of being The Pill.
I've always been amused by generic-sounding names and whether they should be proper pronouns or not. If geeks decide to ignore the AP's guideline, perhaps we should offer them a Kleenex? Or would that be kleenex?
Re: fascists (Score:3, Interesting)
Agreed. They should stick to what is correct in order to at least demonstrate correctness. But what they are saying is that because people abuse the language, they should too, because the abuse becomes "common usage". There is a reason why dictionaries look at only certain types of publications for their weird lists, usages, and definitions. I guess AP will no longer be one of those publications, if indeed if ever was.
Re: fascists (Score:2)
STYLE ALERT (Score:5, Funny)
Don't capitalize "associated press" any longer. As this organization has been around for some time now and it is common to see these words associated with non-news items, we have now lost interest in them and they are no longer to be considered proper nouns.
Thank you for your attention to this matter, denizens of the Internet. If you'd like to learn more, you are welcome to visit my Web site.
CAPSLOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL! (Score:3)
Re: fascists (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: fascists (Score:2)
So their correct to change based on common, thus correct, usage in there paper, because actual correctness doesn't matter over they're, yes? (sic)
Common usage isn't always correct. Yes, language evolves, but that didn't mean it can't be steered. National (and international) newspapers have the ability to demonstrate correct usage and help steer that evolution. At least then English teachers, for example, can point to a daily publication as a reference for correctness in the language. But if newspapers
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OK
Re: fascists (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not about correctness. It's about meaning. The internet isn't a proper noun any more. You wouldn't capitalize the "Phone System", would you? It just isn't a formal name. You wouldn't capitalize the "Interstate Highway System".
And the "Web" is rarely used any more at all. When something becomes that ubiquitous, it doesn't need formality.
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You wouldn't capitalize the "Phone System", would you? It just isn't a formal name.
Not usually, except if it were actually a proper name for a particular system.
You wouldn't capitalize the "Interstate Highway System"
Actually, yes you would [wikipedia.org], if you were referring to the specific Interstate Highway System that is recognized by the federal government as such. If you say "interstate highway system," you create an ambiguity: are you referring to the Eisenhower System, or are you potentially referring to the network of all highways that cross state borders (like U.S. Route 1 [wikipedia.org], which goes all the way from Maine to Florida, and is thus an interstate
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And that, my friend, is why we call the "Internet", the internet.
Because most people are not referring to the original network of research universities, defense department functionaries and contractors. Most people are referring to the thing you use for twittter and email and cat pictures and porn and playing Coun
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"You are welcome on my lawn".
Very kind. Does that extend to my tanks? (I have 5,000 of them).
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"You are welcome on my lawn".
Very kind. Does that extend to my tanks? (I have 5,000 of them).
You must store a lot of liquid.
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That wasn't the Internet. That was ARPAnet or DARPAnet, depending on when they research universities got on. Sheesh...
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> You wouldn't capitalize the "Interstate Highway System".
Yes I would. In fact, given the odds, I bet you can go through my posts and find them referred to as Interstate and National Highway System (of which the Interstate is a part).
They are proper titles.
I do say "Internet." However, I often call it the "'net." I also do not capitalize "web" as that's not the formal name. If I am calling it the World Wide Web then I'll capitalize it.
However, it should be noted that you've a Ph.D. in English Literature
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There is a reason why dictionaries look at only certain types of publications for their weird lists, usages, and definitions.
It has been a very long since most dictionaries have tried to impose their own order on the English language.
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So.. art thou still using the book-of-words thy ealdefæder left thee?
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'But what they are saying is that because people abuse the language, they should too, because the abuse becomes "common usage" '
Clutching those pearls a little too tight? Here, have a kleenex while I xerox you a copy of the style guide.
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I enjoyed your artful presentation of wrong words and misspellings. I started counting them and then realized it takes effort for someone to do this much of it. Couldn't be accidental. Bravo!
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I follow The Economist or, when I have to write for the colonials, Chicago.
The rest are all shite.
The Economist's style guide is a thing of beauty. I have it sitting on my desktop to provide inspiration. But it has to be read with an Oxbridgean accent, and the speaker has to imply with every breath that really you shouldn't be writing at all, but if you absolutely must communicate, then this form is probably the least offensive to others.
Except when it's meant to be. I'd never seen the title 'Mr' used in derision before I picked up that lovely rag.