The Internet Will Not Be Lowercased

[Commentary] After long and considered thought, I have decided that I refuse to spell “Internet” with a lowercase i, and I could care less that the Associated Press has decided otherwise. [Editor’s note: I, on the other hand, live in constant fear of AP style editors and will be adjusting Public Knowledge materials accordingly. Just not this one.] I realize that I’m on the wrong side of history here, that it is only a matter of time before the majority, then the predominant, then the unanimous choice is to name the global network in lowercase. But at least for me, the choice of capitalization is not just about orthographic trends. It is fundamentally about what the Internet is meant to be.

The AP’s decision to change the capitalization of “Internet” was just one entry into a debate that has run nearly as long as the Internet itself has existed. The primary arguments in favor of capitalization, other than longstanding tradition, are twofold: first, that the Internet is a specific noun referring to a single entity, thus meriting a capital initial; and second, that lowercase-internet identifies a generic type of technical network system, of which there may be many, as opposed to the uppercase-Internet, of which there is only one. Arguments, among others, for lowercasing the global Internet: that the network’s rapid growth has rendered it so ubiquitous as to be generic; and that capitalization is old-fashioned and pedantic — the “grammatical tyranny of the internet as a proper noun,” as the Verge put it. We’ve forgotten something important when we see the Internet merely as that loose collection of separate apps and services, rather than seeing the Internet as a phenomenon of interconnectedness. So to me, the choice between the internet and the Internet is not merely about typographic preference or popular fashion. It is about whether we keep seeing the Internet as that bustling marketplace of people and ideas, or whether the internet fades into the background, merely propping up the apps and social networks that dominate the view.