I saw the advertisement to the right on a web story that appeared, not surprisingly, on the AP Website. “We lowercased internet,” it notes, to which you might be inclined to respond, “Big hairy deal!” So what is this ad all about, and why is it worth my time to mention it?
Although you might have missed the press conference, the Associated Press (AP) has issued a new edition of their stylebook, the writing “rulebook” that provides the guidance to a vast array of journalists and other professional writers and editors. Various organizations, for various reasons, publish stylebooks of their own. The American Psychological Association (APA) has a widely used stylebook as does the Modern Language Association (MLA). You might have encountered one or both of these as your guide to documentation of research papers, but they cover a great deal of other ground as well.
The AP stylebook has, since the word first appeared, referred to the “Internet.” That’s a capital letter. Why? I guess they determined that the I/internet was a single entity with governing bodies and rules and such, rather like the Interstate (Highway System).
Today, however, they have decided that I/internet is simply too widely used a word to require that special treatment. Capitalizing I/internet today would be a little bit like capitalizing radio or television. Therefore, the AP braintrust has determined that, from this point forward, the word is “internet.” If you’re using the AP stylebook, then make it “internet.” Other style guides will probably follow suit in coming days.
My reason for writing this is not to cover the spelling changes of a single word. Instead, I want to focus on the place of styleguides in writing. When you watch basketball in high school, college, and the NBA, you’ll notice that the rules are different. They’re not right or wrong, but if you try to apply high school rules to an NBA game, you’d be wrong. And the rules are not static. They change from year to year. There was a time in the NBA when the three-point line and shot clock did not exist. When those innovations came along, some people thought them a bad move, but they had no choice but to play the game according to the new rules.
So when you write in a new setting, whether it be a different class or a different place of employment, try to find out what stylebook rules their communication. Then play by those rules. For now, though, remember: It’s “internet” in the AP style.