And while we’re at it, let’s junk the cap Ws in World Wide Web, and cap E in email. I’ve never understood the maniacal attachment to capital letters for all things related to the internet.

We don’t use a cap T for telephone, R for radio or railroad, cap Ps for pencil and paper and cap H in highway. These were all important communication media that changed the way we live and work and relate to one another, yet we’ve managed quite nicely with the lowercase.

Open any style guide and see them shriek the capital rule on Internet and Web. “Death to lowercase users!” they seem to be saying.

Why?

I don’t buy the proper-noun argument. Surely the internet has transcended the specific and proper and moved into the realm of the generic. These words aren’t copyrighted or branded or trademarked, so that’s no excuse either.

My theory is that the capitalization is a hangover from the early heady days when over-exuberance prompted some people to MAKE IT ALL SEEM MORE IMPORTANT BY WRITING IT IN CAPITAL LETTERS.

Let’s not be style slaves to style guides that are simply repeating internet grammar protocols of yore. Let’s grow up and challenge these unnecessary embellishments.

It’s pretentious and it stokes the forces of capital-letter inflation. After all, if everything is capitalized, then nothing stands out.

Down with capital I in internet.

BTW, the spell check on this post is lighting up the word internet. Wonder why?

« Enchanted PEI
Middle ageism »


This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 25th, 2007 at 9:50 am and is filed under banned words, culture, odd things, words. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.