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Should 'Internet,' 'Web,' And 'E-Mail' Start With Lowercase Letters?

Just as the Internet has evolved over the past decade and a half, the language used to describe it has evolved as well. We used to say "World Wide Web," now we just say "Web." English tends to get more compact and faster over time.

A year or two ago, people started dropping the uppercase letters in "Internet" and "Web." They made a sensible argument: The Internet and Web aren't singular objects, like the Washington Monument or the Pacific Ocean. They are networks of networks, like the phone or highway systems, which we write about in lowercase.

Another great controversy in language circles revolves around the word "e-mail." These days, the most common spelling is probably "email," dropping the hyphen. But some people (including InformationWeek) are purists, hanging on to that hyphen as a recognition that the word "e-mail" is a mashup of "electronic mail," and noting that "email" and "e-mail" would normally be pronounced differently -- the "e" in "email" would usually be a short "e," not the long "e" in "e-mail."

At InformationWeek, we lag a little bit behind the cutting edge in language. We still say "Internet" and "Web." That works for us, it emphasizes our identity as a publication that writes about the practical use of technology, not jumping on the latest fad and hailing it as a revolution that will sweep aside everything that came before. We wait for technology to prove itself before falling down and praising it.

I just included the following paragraph in an e-mail to a freelance contributor:

BTW, we still use "e-mail" and "Web," not "email" and "web." I know that's old-fashioned. I actually think it's kind of charming, and we should go all the way and just use Victorian language: "Aetheric Correspondence" instead of "e-mail," "Visual Telegraph," instead of "Web." The copy-editors are taking this under advisement.

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