Friday, February 14, 2025

Supreme Court weighs in on whether or not you should capitalize internet

The conflict of upper case Internet versus lowercase net, which till now turned in large part fought quietly among factions of copy editors, has discovered its manner to the Supreme Court. The philosophies are roughly divided between “net as a place” (capitalized, as with a right noun) and “internet as generic” (lowercased)—a few argue that using “net” reflects its use as a medium, like a tv or radio or newspapers; others claim that “Internet” refers to a particular, singular worldwide network. (The A.V. Club’s style was modified from higher- to lowercase a few years ago, and A.P. Style made the change just the remaining year. Chicago Manual Of Style still uppercases the Internet and, God assist us, World Wide Web.)

Vice’s Motherboard reports today on the Supreme Court case Packingham v. North Carolina, which was argued in February and decided the day before this. The issue is ostensibly about the First Amendment and whether a convicted sex offender’s right to a social media presence is constitutionally protected; however, Motherboard points out a “low-key battle” in the written opinions: Justice Kennedy capitalizes the Internet, and Justice Alito lowercases it. This isn’t only meaningless combat over a single letter. Still, something that could shape the future of virtual law, as upcoming instances ought to flip “on whether the justices see the Internet as ‘the present-day public square,’ as Kennedy stated in Packingham, or simply as a ‘tool’ consistent with Alito.”

As Motherboard says, it’s possible that this is all an awful lot of ado about nothing and that Kennedy and Alito’s capitalization patterns were just luck. But the selection to capitalize (or no longer) is nothing new. Katherine Connor Martin wrote for the Oxford English Dictionary blog final year: Why did the Internet grow to be capitalized inside the first location? In reality, the earliest use of the word, noted in the Oxford English Dictionary from 1974, turned into a lowercase i. Initially, there were many internets—the term became used to consult any computer community comprising or connecting several smaller networks; it later got here to refer particularly to the global network we realize these days, which became distinguished as “the Internet” instead of “the web.

capitalize internet

Merriam-Webster capitalizes it, so we reached out to M-W science editor Daniel Brandon, who instructed us through email: I count on that if the cutting-edge developments continue, the modern-day utilization [Internet] will soon outweigh the importance of the historical usage [Internet], and we can formally begin imparting the decrease case form as the principle headword. But most importantly, when we dug into the court docket critiques to peer just how internet-savvy the justices are, we found this gem in Justice Kennedy’s opinion (emphasis ours): The court docket additionally held that the regulation leaves open ok opportunity way of communique as it allows the petitioner to advantage get right of entry to websites that the court docket believed perform the “equal or similar” functions as social media, which include the Paula Deen Network and the website for the local NBC associate.

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William M. Alberts
William M. Alberts
Unable to type with boxing gloves on. Professional beer scholar. Problem solver. Extreme pop culture fan. Fixie owner, shiba-inu lover, band member, International Swiss style practitioner and holistic designer. Acting at the intersection of design and mathematics to save the world from bad design. I'm a designer and this is my work.

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