Lowercasing "internet" is gaining favor in high places. (Editing).

Almost two years ago I went public with my belief that internet should not be capitalized ("Is your editor committing a capital crime?" NL/NL 3/30/01).

"Because the internet and the web have become so commonplace, they no longer deserve any status they had as proper nouns. It's like capitalizing the telephone.

"Capitalizing internet reminds me of 18th-century writers who would sprinkle capitalized words throughout their work--such as Honor or Shame or the Four Humors so popular in medieval physiology. In other words, it's just plain old-fashioned."

I sent the article to Norm Goldstein, the editor of The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual. He responded something to the effect that they were not going to buck common practice.

A few readers confided to me that they agreed with me wholeheartedly, but that their bosses wouldn't allow it.

So I remained what I wrote in that article--"probably the only person in America who doesn't capitalize internet."

Not any longer. The New York Times December 29 Week in Review devoted a quarter of a page to the subject in the context of an unnamed book on families and the internet coming from M.I.T. Press this spring. Its author, Joseph Turow, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, "has begun a small crusade to de-capitalize Internet--and, by extension, to acknowledge a deep shift in the way we think about the online world," John Schwartz wrote.

"'I think what it means is it's part of the everyday universe,' he said.

"Capitalization irked him because, he said, it seemed to imply that reaching deep into the vast, interconnected ether was a brand-name experience.

"'The capitalization of things seems to place an inordinate, almost private emphasis on something,' he said, turning it into a Kleenex or Frigidaire. 'The Internet, at least philosophically, should not be owned by anyone,' he said, calling it 'part of the neural universe of life."'

Schwartz continued: "For Mr. Turow, the first step in his campaign was persuading his book editor to enlist. She compromised, dropping to lowercase in newly written parts and retaining the capital in older articles reproduced in the book."

Meanwhile, Turow enlisted the support of some other professors, including Steven Jones, communications professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and president of the Association of Internet Researchers. "I think the time is right,' he said, to treat the Internet 'the way we refer to television, radio and the telephone."'

Jones brought the subject up at an educators' conference. "'I just noticed everybody's attention kind of snapped forward."'

Schwartz concluded his article (titled "Who Owns the Internet? You and i Do"), "Which leads us back to a profound question for Mr. Turow: Don't you have anything better to do?

"'That's a really interesting question,' he said. 'I was an English major. I'm very sensitive to the nuances of words, and I'm very concerned about the nuances, the feel that words have within the society.'

"Fair enough. Perhaps the next big thing, after all, will be small. At least initially."