“i” think “I” disagree
I work in words. For the last nearly seven years, I’ve worked at various magazines and websites, and for the last month or so, at a newspaper. My realm is copyediting, for the most part, with some writing thrown in here and there.
What nearly every publication has in common with every other is style, exemplified typically in a house style guide. Most style guides point to a more well-established volume of reference as the basis of all questions of protocol (and, depending on the pride of the publication in question, a varying degree of deference to it). And, here’s the point of this post, just about every style guide I’ve ever seen (not an exhaustive bunch, to be sure) likes to treat the word “Internet” the way I’ve treated it here.
Fine.
But it occurred to me today that the net itself wouldn’t stand for this.
I was reading an article on online journalism in The New Yorker by Columbia University’s Nicholas Lemann, and suddenly all those uppercase Is started popping off the page, stabbing me in the…nevermind.
It became so, so clear, right there, in a single instance as I boarded my BART train ─ internet should be treated as the internet itself would treat it.
You may think such a basis ridiculous, and that, if carried out to its logical conclusion, the word may end up looking something like “nturnt.”
But really. Why capitalize? The internet is no longer novel or particularly well-revered by its users. Its ubiquity and mundaneness (despite still being a wondrous thing) increase worldwide every hour, and even my mom has a web-connected computer at home now.
I cast my vote: it’s time to lowercase the i in internet.
Post-script: I also abandoned capitalizing the w in web, and have never understood why some people want website to be two words.
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August 17th, 2006 at 9:57 am
Wait, but what about the rest of the Lemann article, regarding citizen journalism? What did you think about it? It’s all the buzz here.
August 17th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
It saddens me to read that you “have never understand” why anyone would want “Web site” to be two words. Personally, as a copy editor myself, I don’t mind it either way. In fact I’m fine with “website.” And yet I find your callousness, your lack of empathy, your inability to make the effort to understand the Other so dismaying! I wonder how old you are? Were you around in the early nineties when the first Web browser, NSCA Mosaic, was released (only on the Mac!). If so, at that time, when the World Wide Web was something new and mysterious to 99.9% of the population, were you already exhibiting your appalling failure of understanding? Were you perplexed that people would write about visiting a “Web site” in 1993? Be honest! Now, I’d like to assume you have enough humanity in you, deep down, in your heart of hearts, to feel some level of sorrow about your ignorance on this score (your ignorance about the motivations and feelings of others), so I’m going to help you redeem yourself by giving you at least one, small reason that someone might cite in suuport of a preference for “Web site”: Closed-up compound words in English *tend* (not always, of course!) to be pronounced with the first syllable heavily accented, which is why some people also object to closing up “backyard” and “backseat.” There are other reasons, but this is a good start in your moral education. Now, tell me you find that impossible to understand.
August 17th, 2006 at 4:13 pm
[...] Emdash did us all the favor of pointing out a vital copy error in a post by yours truly. From the corrector: “I would have a few copyediting cavils here if I were being hopelessly petty, and never mind is only one word to Kurt, God rest ‘im, but that would be foolish, because boy, do I agree.” [...]
August 17th, 2006 at 4:57 pm
Hi Facilitator,
Thanks for commenting.
First, I’m not sure why you place “have never understand” in quotes in your comment. Is it supposed to signify a copy error in my post? If so, I don’t see it. I just ran an edit on the post, and did find a few other errors that somehow escaped your talented (dare I say professional?) eye. But that’s neither here nor there.
Second, I am perhaps older than you imagine. I was around when Mosaic was created, but I wasn’t on a computer at the time. I only know the history of the early web from what I’ve read in books and learned at journalism school. So I’ll give you that.
But I have been “using” the internet pretty consistently since 1998 or so. I’m not saying that miles driven online makes someone inherently better than anyone else. In fact, what I’m saying is the opposite, and seems to fly in the face of your pomposity here─it doesn’t matter what you know online, or how many websites you’ve built, or what level of code you can write, or how old you are, where you come from, or what you believe in. The point of the whole endeavor is that everyone has an outlet now. Well, not everyone. As I was careful to indicate, not all of the six-point-something billion human beings alive today is able to go online. But the expansion of the internet is both vast and rapid, and I’m all for it.
Sorry to have gotten ugly here, but I simply don’t care for your tone. Your argument (seemingly that the web is something to be revered, and thus uppercased and set as a word on its own) would be much, much stronger if couched in non-condescending language. And you wouldn’t look like such a lame-ass if you had linked back to yourself. That’s all.
August 17th, 2006 at 5:03 pm
dear evicious:
i just finished reading the lemann article today. i’ll do my best to post my thoughts asap.