Your humble editor gains another key proponent of lowercasing internet.

Well, if not "humble," at least "humbled." Since early 2001, I've been lowercasing the word internet but have found very few editors to agree with me--with some notable exceptions, the latest being Tony Long, copy chief at Wired News--no less--the online news site connected to Wired magazine.

But first, a quick recap. From the 4/30/01 NL/NL:

  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.

In the 12/31/02 issue, we ran an item on The New York Times' devoting a quarter-page to the subject, citing Joseph Turow, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, who essentially agreed with my argument.

He was described as beginning "a small crusade to de-capitalize Internet--and, by extension, to acknowledge a deep shift in the way we think about the online world." The Times writer continued:

  "I think what it means is it's part of the everyday universe," [Turow]
  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."

Wired weighs in

In a recent interview with Wired's Tony Long in Copy Editor, the newsletter's editor, Wendalyn Nichols, said:

  Our readers are now in shock, and will have noticed also that you use
  website, not Web site, and lowercase web.
    I made the decision to lowercase internet, web, and net in August of
  2004. You can read my article about my reasoning at
  http://wired.com/news/culture/0.645960.html.
    In that article, you say, "A change in our house style was necessary
  to put into perspective what the internet is: another medium for
  delivering and receiving information. That it transformed human
  communication is beyond dispute. But no more so than moveable type did
  in its day. Or the radio. Or television."
    Those changes resulted in a tremendous amount of feedback, pro and
  con. Academics and editors from traditional media were generally
  supportive of the decisions. IT professionals and people who think the
  internet is going to save the world were extremely critical. Since I
  know it's not going to save the world, I'm comfortable knowing I made
  the right decision.

Welcome to the lowercase barricades, Tony.