Talk:Capitalization of Internet

This article fails to answer the question: in what way does the word Internet describe a proper noun? I honestly don't get it. -Howarthe (talk) 17:31, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

An internet is a collection of separate local area networks that can communicate as if one network (using routers).

The Internet is the world-wide internet of public networks inhabited by Wikipedia and other websites and more.

The capital I Internet was used to identify the particular internet being discussed. However, statistically speaking, no one knows what an internet is now. Johnuniq (talk) 23:11, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, like the Telephone Network, and of course, the Sky. --Nigelj (talk) 11:17, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

IMHO common usage made it follow the same pattern as "world". Even though there only one "world" we're talking about, it stays lowercase.

Maybe it's a holdover from the same language-process where people living in a town next to a river start just calling the river next to them "the river"? That's no reason to ask "What river?" because people in town always mean the same river.

If anything "the Internet" becoming "the internet" is less indicative of a language-breakdown and more a sign of its massive success. Ikmxx (talk) 21:31, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Gathered Zanahary (talk) 12:33, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

There are plenty of internets which aren't connected to the Internet. Do a Web search on 'air gap'.

What people who insist on spelling 'Internet' incorrectly don't seem to understand is that these are different words with different meanings. Jnc (talk)00:49, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

True. But in the past thirty or forty years, there has been a shift in how those different meanings are expressed. I've just edited a book about cloud computing, and only once is the term "an internet" used in its original historical sense, as "a collection of separate local area networks that can communicate as if one network (using routers)." The same is true in common usage: several LANs connected "as if one network" seems to be described as simply "a network" (perhaps adding an appropriate adjective for the situation), albeit a bit more complex than six workstations and a server connected by ethernet cables. At the same time, the Internet ("the world-wide internet of public networks inhabited by Wikipedia and other websites and more") seems to have lost its branding. Normal people don't think of it as a proper noun and no longer use the word that way: especially with the advent of cloud computing, it seems that the internet (by which I mean the Internet) has become a common noun, while internets are simply called networks. Garner's Modern English Usage (2016) says "Internet" should be capitalized, but in that same year, the AP Stylebook and the Chicago Manual of Style both demoted "internet" to common-noun status. Since then, common usage has become even more uniformly lowercase. Garner's just hasn't caught up yet. --Nic Nicolas Nelson (talk) 19:42, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

First, minor correction; an internet isn't necessarily made up of only local area networks; many also contain[ed] long-haul point-to-point links (large ones included clusters of LANS connected by such links). The crucial distinction between an internet, made up of a group of local area networks, and a network made up of a group of local area networks (connected e.g. by bridges) is 'how they are connected: the internet uses routers as the connecting devices. (Where 'router' is defined as 'a packet switch which examines the internet header'; bridges look at the network header - a different level in the protocol stack/nested headers.)

When the people creating internet technology needed a name for the large internet we were all connected to, we used the English rule for proper nouns and came up with 'Internet'. (Had we been able to foresee that people who didn't understand the difference, and thus didn't realize that by spelling Internet as 'internet', they were changing the meaning, we'd probably have called it the 'Meganet', or something, but 'Internet' was crisp, and elegant. And now here we are.)

Common use may be 'internet', but if common use is king, why don't we all stop using 'virus' and 'bacteria' and switch to 'germs'? Just as medical professionals continue to use the more complex terms because they accurately describe two importantly different classes of things (without, in their case, having to put up with people who don't understand that, trying to degrade the terminology), serious professionals in the computer networking field continue to use the two different words, with their original meanings, because they need two terms. (Look through recent RFC's in the RFC Index, e.g. RFC-9006, from April 2021, and you'll see this.)

As long as there are internets which are not connected to the Internet, there will be a use for two terms; and people who understand that they are two distinct words with different meanings will continue not to mis-spell the one referring to the global internet. Noel (talk) 15:52, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

cough cough... let's try to keep discussion focused on improvements to the article... Popcornfud (talk) 16:10, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

The redirect Capitalization of Web has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 August 22 § Capitalization of Web until a consensus is reached. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:19, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

The redirect Capitalization of the Web has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 August 22 § Capitalization of the Web until a consensus is reached. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:20, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

@Jay I wouldn't have known about this RfD with the IP editor's lack of edit summary. I think nothing changes on the watchlist unless you include the talk pages. – The Grid (talk) 12:49, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

@The Grid: Pages and their associated talk pages are tied together. If one is added to the watchlist, the other gets automatically added too. The point is, edit summary is useful but not mandatory. Not providing an explanation should not be a reason to revert an edit, but not understanding an edit can be a reason. Jay 💬 14:47, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

It has been proposed in this section that Capitalization of Internet be renamed and moved to Capitalization of internetCapitalization of internet. A bot will list this discussion on the requested moves current discussions subpage within an hour of this tag being placed. The discussion may be closed 7 days after being opened, if consensus has been reached (see the closing instructions). Please base arguments on article title policy, and keep discussion succinct and civil. Please use {{subst:requested move}}. Do not use {{requested move/dated}} directly. Links: current log • target log • direct move

Capitalization of Internet → Capitalization of internetCapitalization of internet – Wikipedia has a history of only sporadically capitalising the word internet in its articles, and this article's title is no exception. As this article shows, since 2016 most reliable sources have switched to the lowercase form, internet. Per MOS:CAPS, Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalisation, and as a preponderance of reliable sources now use lowercase, this article should do too. Newbzy (talk) 02:15, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

• This proposal is a misunderstanding of the history but that might be lost to deep time now. Johnuniq (talk) 02:17, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

  I'm not sure I fully understand what you mean... since the start of the 21st century there's been a push to decapitalise the term. I'm hoping this RM will draw attention to how we are being pretty inconsistent with this on Wikipedia. Newbzy (talk) 02:29, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

  It's ok, only people with significant knowledge of networking over a long period understand the history. In brief, an "internet" (lowercase) is a group of networks perhaps operated for internal use by a company. The one and only "Internet" (capital) is the world wide internet that joins pretty well everything now. That's why it had a capital. People who don't understand the issue started writing the word in lowercase. That's fine, no problem, common usage wants simplicity. However the issue was the push to change the "Internet" to simple "internet" because as far as most people concerned, it was just a thing they used like a car. Style guides argued that lowercase should be used to comply with other common usage words and for simplicity. That is, the argument was about "Internet" with a capital I. Johnuniq (talk) 08:18, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

I know all that, actually, and I was going to mention it in the initial RM starting comment, but left it out for brevity. There's no need to maintain the distinction anymore, just as The New York Times writes in their article It’s Official: The ‘Internet’ Is Over: "[It's] a pointless distinction now, since “internet” is rarely used anymore in the generic sense." Newbzy (talk) 08:33, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

• Support per MOS:CAPS. (And MOS:CAPS is the reason we should be spelling "internet" lowercase everywhere on Wikipedia, but that's a different — and well worn — debate.) Popcornfud (talk) 04:18, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Internet and WikiProject Linguistics have been notified of this discussion. Qwerty123M (talk) 04:35, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose. I am inclined to support this motion as not capitalising "internet" would be far better given that there is no Manual of Style article telling us to do so. I cannot support this idea because the idea needs to be widely discussed by the community at large first via an RFC or a more important forum. I agree that MOS:CAPS supports the argument in favour of this proposal but there seems to be an unwritten consensus present on other articles and this one that "internet" is a proper noun and hence should be capitalised. Maybe "internet" is just capitalised because that's the way auto-correct services such as on iOS have treated the word!

Having said all this, I would much prefer a Manual of Style article be created on why "internet" is capitalised because it probably would not be capitalised in a sentence outside of Wikipedia. Qwerty123M (talk) 04:43, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

Given that there's no MoS guidance either way, I don't see why a consensus can't be found on a per-article basis. If half of the uses of the word "internet" are lowercase on Wikipedia already, why not this article too? (Assuming that's the consensus formed by the editors looking at it, of course.) Popcornfud (talk) 04:47, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

Finding consensus locally would be dramatically inefficient and if people change the capitalisation of "internet" in other articles, it would probably result in frequent edit wars. From what I've seen, it's much less than half of all articles that have a different capitalisation of "internet", usually the capitalised version is used. Per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, this proposal is not the best way to gather consensus on an apparent site-wide policy. Consensus probably will not hold if it is made locally, if many users know about it via an RFC then we will have success on judging what is most appropriate.

I favour MOS:CAPS including information on the words that should always be capitalised, this will be best so that everyone is certain on whether "internet" should be capitalised because this is not common practice and so consensus does not change based on different articles. Qwerty123M (talk) 07:47, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

If it wasn't clear, I just meant getting a consensus to change something on this article, for this one case, not every other article where the word internet is used. Popcornfud (talk) 10:01, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

Even though you have clarified that a local consensus is sought, I think any consensus here would make its way to other articles, resulting in inconsistent capitalisations. It's safest to do redo this proposal in a forum where many opinions will be contributed and the community at large agrees on the best way forward. Qwerty123M (talk) 10:13, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose Clearly not a serious suggestion, given the date — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 07:05, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

If you're talking about April Fools' Day, where I'm from we barely celebrate it, so I wasn't aware that it was today when I started this RM. Can you guys in the US really not take anything seriously on April 1st, even policy-based arguments? Newbzy (talk) 08:33, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

guys in the US? — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 08:37, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

Yep – Newbzy (talk) 08:41, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

— GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 09:00, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

This user lives in York.

Kashkomarimashita. Newbzy (talk) 09:03, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

Gesundheit! — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 11:03, 1 April 2026 (UTC)