Internet and Web to be assigned diminished status as of June 1.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

WSJ will join AP and others in lowercasing internet and the web as of June 1

https://twitter.com/ahmed/status/737694105598328832

Style & Substance

Vol. 29, No. 5: The internet

May 31, 2016 12:58 pm ET

The internet and other changes

Many of us still remember when we had to refer to email as electronic mail, and then a change to e-mail with a hyphen, before evolving to email. Now, the latest evolution in how we refer to technology: We will join others including the Associated Press in lowercasing internet and the web as of June 1.

There are still vocal proponents of uppercase Internet, arguing it is a proper noun. But the usage is clearly trending lowercase, treating internet as nothing but a generic noun for the global computer network, as deserving of lowercase as television and cable. It will seem strange to many of us to start using it lowercase, but lowercasing proponents note that phonograph was once uppercase, too. Time to move the needle, once again.

There were other lingering issues with some of our longtime style rules, so here are a handful of new rulings, including the internet one:

● Lowercase the internet and the web. This also means one word now, lowercase, instead of two-word phrases for webpage and webfeed, but we will continue to uppercase World Wide Web, the subset of the internet for information retrieval, if we still need to refer to it at all.

● No hyphen in longstanding, parallel with longtime.

● Press conference and press release no longer have to be changed to news conference and news release. For decades, we have mandated news conference/news release, on the premise that reporters aren’t just from print media. That is pretty obvious at this point. So now, the bigger point might be not to imply that “news” is really coming out of such conferences, plus it is kind of charming to still talk about “press.”

[hunter]

1. Good. I was tired of ignoring that damn red squiggly underline.

Okay, nope, I'm lying. I ignore that damn red squiggly underline multiple times every day.

I consider rules of spelling and grammar a suggestion, not the law, because if I ever let my OCD latch onto spelling or grammar my fingers would knot up and I'd never write again.

[bemildred]

2. Good, there is no "The Internet" any more.

And I hate auto-correct in all its forms, and other "active elements" with their wrong and distracting demands for attention. "Look at me! I'm clippy! I have no idea what to do if a serious question comes up, but aren't I cool?"