Is it "Internet" or "internet"?

February 12, 2025 7:00 AM

More than idle curiosity prompted my question. Increasingly, I worry that my continuing to capitalize "Internet" will mark me out as A Old, to my professional disadvantage. I would still hyphenate "e-mail" if I thought I could get away with it, so I'm too much of a fuddy-duddy to trust my own judgment.

I believe the Chicago Manual of Style capitalizes and the AP Style Book does not, so no help there.

This covers the debate well, but it's 11 years old.

posted by Lemkin to Technology (30 answers total)

Yes I would say capitalising marks you out as at minimum an academic or someone from an overly formal profession and also potentially on the "fuddy" path! I think the arguments in the link against capitalising have become even more relevant in the intervening years.
posted by london explorer girl at 7:07 AM on February 12 [3 favorites]

My phone used to autocorrect internet to Internet until quite recently, which is probably reflective of the changing times. The capitalized version is still a suggestion option on the predictive text deck though. Every time I tap it and accidentally send the capitalized version in a text or something, not only do I feel a great shame, but the crystal in my hand starts blinking red. Best to avoid imo.
posted by phunniemee at 7:13 AM on February 12 [8 favorites]

Agreeing with @londoneexplorergirl. And I think of it as infrastructure, e.g. I wouldn't write the Sewer System.

Note that Autobahn isn't comparable because all german Nouns start with uppercase.

Also,its just a box.
posted by falsedmitri at 7:14 AM on February 12 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: I just checked and Merriam-Webster defaults to "Internet" (while noting that it is rapidly losing ground, and already a minority in British usage) but "email".
posted by Lemkin at 7:24 AM on February 12

I'm a (fiction) copy editor; I literally think about stuff like this all day long. In fiction, there's no question that I'd lowercase it…unless the character was a pedant or super-old.

But yeah, language is a living thing and it constantly changes. You're definitely asking about a word that's currently changing a lot. Here are Google Ngram charts showing the usage *in print* for English generally, American English and British English.

As for me, the word that's currently giving me heebie-jeebies is Wi-Fi. I have no doubt it'll be wifi someday, but we're not there yet.
posted by BlahLaLa at 7:46 AM on February 12 [5 favorites]

I'm an old geek as well as being an old fuddy-duddy, so I still use lower-case on the rare occasions when I write about an internet (any network, including an isolated local network) that uses internet protocol (IP), and uppercase when I write about the Internet when I talk about that one specific global network based on internet protocol.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 8:00 AM on February 12 [6 favorites]

I feel like tone and grammar are more important in professional writing than capitalization. Obviously anyone who judges you on it is a bit of an ass. I let usage guide me. If I am talking about it specifically as A Thing, it gets a capital. If I'm just mentioning it casually, it doesn't. Think of what Shakesepeare would do. He didn't even spell his name consistently. Capitalization can be expressive and useful outside of style guides. E.g. I wouldn't exactly recommend sArCasM cAps in formal email, but I might use it in a quick note to a work friend. When authoritative style guides disagree, that gives you extra license to use your personal style.
posted by SaltySalticid at 8:11 AM on February 12 [1 favorite]

You didn't mention the context, which is important. I'm a former academic (linguist, lol) and how I would write for a journal is quite different than how I would write an email, a forum comment, or whatever. Of course there are similarities because the same person is behind all of them, but there's no one set of rules, no one correct style to follow.

It's not just capitalizing "Internet" that might mark you as an Old. Using a more formal style in a context where norms have evolved to be less formal will do the same. A journal publication might require you to follow a specific style guide, but emails generally don't.

I'd observe what the people around you are doing in these different contexts. Think like a linguist. What are the prevailing norms? If there are variations, who does what, and what information do those stylistic choices communicate about them?

tl;dr i wouldn't capitalize "internet" unless i was writing for a formal publication and was following a specific style guide that told me to. or if i was being ironic.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:20 AM on February 12 [3 favorites]

I would argue that the more you know about the history of computer networking, the more likely you are to capitalize. Since few people do, even those who are broadly tech savvy, I understand why the lower case usage has dropped off. My own minor child, who is capable of programming in several languages, does not really understand the difference between Ethernet and WiFi.

But as someone who has read "Internetworking with TCP/IP" cover to cover, and still remembers encoding the network hops into an email address by hand, there is a specific Internet that I am connected to right now, and I will keep capitalizing until I die at the bottom of this hill, soaked in my own blood. (This isn't just mindless pedantry, in 1996 I was arguing in favor of email when "e-mail" was by far more common.) The federation of networks into a single public IP address space, let alone a domain name service to allow you to connect to hosts by name, with near-absolute security, didn't just happen. It took decades. Connecting between various networks at all, let alone at high speed, was a nightmare. It cost hundreds of dollars a month to run a 0.0005 gigabit connection. Ford Motor paid US$500,000 per gigabyte of email traffic. Even today there is considerable effort expended on "peering" agreements and undersea cables to allow traffic to flow with minimal latency and maximum throughput between ISPs and large hosts.

It's such a stunning technological and social achievement that it deserves not only capitalization but droping the definite article, like Concorde.

Of course, by now the whole edifice is so important at an economic and even societal level that it can't be allowed to defederate, and so has become like oxygen. Incredibly important, and completely taken for granted.
posted by wnissen at 8:41 AM on February 12 [10 favorites]

It used to be that there were many internets out there, particularly as network research teams would bridge their research systems together via funny mediators. The one global world-wide one was given a proper noun: The Internet. Likewise there were many webs of documents out there, but the one timbl made was The World-Wide Web, which was a proper noun.

For a decade or so, we capitalised The Internet and The Web (It's a Web page, not a "webpage", to my crotchety GenX instincts). Unless you were on another internet, or using another web.

But over the past 15 years, newspapers and dictionaries and standards documents have given up and just started calling it the internet, and the web, and we're expected to write "webpage" now whenever that topic comes up. Times change.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 8:47 AM on February 12 [3 favorites]

I edit a magazine that follows CMOS. They stopped capitalizing internet in the last edition.
posted by Just the one swan, actually at 8:59 AM on February 12 [3 favorites]

I worry that my continuing to capitalize "Internet" will mark me out as A Old

it does, regardless of whether you are technically correct. And it's not "will mark me out", it already does mark you out and has done for at a minimum several years, at least to anyone under 40. Adhering to long-held formal definitions of things despite the rest of the world changing is pretty much a definition of being old.

The more important question is probably "do you mind being marked out as A Old?". If you do, stop capitalizing it. If you don't, capitalize to your heart's content.

(as I'm nearer 50 than 40 and I'll never ever stop double spacing after a full stop no matter what other people proclaim is "correct", I say capitalize away and to hell with what other people think but obviously YMMV)
posted by underclocked at 9:34 AM on February 12 [4 favorites]

It kind of marks you out as an old if you give a damn, I think.
posted by HypotheticalWoman at 10:27 AM on February 12 [1 favorite]

Even thinking to ask this question is a sign of being aged, I'm afraid. Simply using the word "internet" as opposed to "online" might raise suspicions outside of formal contexts.

As for me, the word that's currently giving me heebie-jeebies is Wi-Fi. I have no doubt it'll be wifi someday, but we're not there yet.

But Wi-Fi doesn't actually stand for anything, so wifi makes just as much sense. Wi-Fi is a brand name, which is now in the process of being genericized as wifi.
posted by ssg at 10:35 AM on February 12 [2 favorites]

I am an old and I use Internet when referring to the thing we all connect to via our providers/phones, and I use network when I'm talking about a specific network. But I also capitalize and punctuate in texts, so whichever one I use I am already marked as "old".
posted by drossdragon at 11:08 AM on February 12 [3 favorites]

The best thing about "Wi-Fi" is that most non-English speakers pronounce it "weefy".
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 12:09 PM on February 12 [5 favorites]

Like drossdragon, I capitalize the word when I am using it to talk about the global connected IT infrastructure, but not when referring to how some computer networks exchange data. (And yes, I actually treat texts and email as real communication: it drives my kids wild to see full sentences. I also advocate for the semicolon in my house, which is a lonely -- if noble -- cause.)
posted by wenestvedt at 12:43 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]

The AP uses "internet", and I think of the lowercase form as having been the dominant one for many years now. Capitalizing it definitely looks archaic to me (and I'm someone who would have capitalized it 20 years ago).
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 12:46 PM on February 12 [3 favorites]

I couldn't tell you whether it will harm you professionally, but it has not occurred to me to capitalise internet for years and years. In general, capitalisation is overdone and text is easier to read without it.
posted by plonkee at 2:03 PM on February 12 [2 favorites]

When you get dressed, do you dress for fashion or in a classic style? If you dress for fashion, do not capitalize the "i" in Internet. If you have a classic style, say a light blue shirt with khaki pants, a blue blazer, loafers AND socks, capitalize the "I" in Internet.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 4:32 PM on February 12 [3 favorites]

I would add that if you are like me and still put two spaces after a period (Thank you Mr. Feldman 8th grade typing class) you will be branded an old no matter what you do with your "i". If your goal is to not be branded as an "old" and you are an "old", sooner or later, the old always comes out.

Whenever I am called out in say a capital I in Internet, I just mumble something something spellcheck. I don't make those decisions, the little person inside my phone does.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 4:37 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]

I have a sofa pillow approach to capitalization: I conform to whatever made the last impression on me.
posted by jamjam at 9:01 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]

I would say this does indeed cover the debate well, except that 11 years have passed and that is a long time in the history of something that really only hit the public perception 30-ish years ago.

And that entire 11 years has been a headlong slide downwards towards a lower case i in internet.
posted by flug at 9:03 PM on February 12 [1 favorite]

Part of becoming An Old is learning to embrace it without being restricted by it. Nobody wants you to go all skibidi toilet. That would be cringe (or maybe Ohio? I don't even know! I'm old!). You can capitalize Internet if you want, knowing it marks you as a person who puts on their captain's hat and fires up Netscape Navigator. They might dismiss that experience, but it can be a point of pride as well. We all do a lot of shaking our fist at the clouds these days, and the young'uns should know to stay off our lawns.

Personally I use "internet" because the one global network is a fiction anyway. We are divided by language, by firewalls and IP addresses, by platforms of communication and habits. Metafilter is a precious place because it is filled with links to other places. That's so rare on the modern internet. The Internet is dead, long live the internet!
posted by rikschell at 4:50 AM on February 13 [1 favorite]

FWIW, from Wikipedia, Capitalization of Internet. Although it seems most organizations have gone to lowercase, there are still a few holdouts like Ars Technica (!).
posted by mhum at 11:23 AM on February 13

The best thing about "Wi-Fi" is that most non-English speakers pronounce it "weefy".

I've heard that 8% of native English speakers pronounce it to rhyme with "spiffy."

I would add that if you are like me and still put two spaces after a period (Thank you Mr. Feldman 8th grade typing class) you will be branded an old no matter what you do

How frustrating it must be for Mr Feldman and you, how your browser corrects your double-spacing. But because it does, no-one online can tell you're an old!
posted by Rash at 1:17 PM on February 13 [1 favorite]

I put two spaces after this full stop. And then I put only one space after this full stop. But HTML collapses whitespace in layout, so you'd be hard-pressed to know I did this without my announcing it.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:24 PM on February 16

The New Yorker just went full lowercase "internet" and John Gruber weighs in.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 8:30 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]

Yes, I just saw the NY Times' article on the New Yorker's change:

The magazine will abandon “Web site,” “in-box,” and “Internet” in favor of the more familiar “website,” “inbox” and “internet.” “Cellphone” will be one word, rather than two.

posted by Artifice_Eternity at 8:40 AM on March 17 [1 favorite]

As noted in the articles, the New Yorker is off in outer space somewhere. I mean, I read a bit of French and understand why it's not an umlaut, but a diaeresis in English is patently ridiculous. So I wouldn't necessarily read anything into a choice the New Yorker makes either way. They may not be wrong, but they may not be right, either.
posted by wnissen at 9:36 AM on March 19