Internet, Web, and Other Post-Watergate Concerns
Q. Your online Q&As are helpful. Is it time to revisit the question of whether to capitalize Internet and Web site? It seems that both of these have come to refer to phenomena that are generic, like telephone line or billboard. Or can you show us that they are formal, official names of entities that require a proper noun?
A. The “website” versus “Web site” debate is discussed elsewhere in this section. As for “Internet,” I think it is relatively clear that people use the term “Internet” (capital I) to refer to the whole thing. This “whole thing” is the growing collection of servers worldwide that have a connection or potential connection to each other using a standard protocol for network addresses and communication known as TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol). Government agencies involved in its development and maintenance, such as the National Science Foundation, refer to the capital-I Internet, and I think there is, for now, little reason to fret over capitalizing it, as long as one is not using the term more generically—for example, to refer simply to any network of computers.
