[Ea]

Originally Posted by Dave_S

I not not think that matters a whole lot whether it is capitalized or not, but I usually do use the capital form. My logic is that "an internet" is simply a network that interconnects two or more networks, while "the Internet" is a single worldwide interconnection of networks. There is only one Internet, unlike the comparisons in the article to the examples of radio or television. There is only one Internet, while there are many internets and intranets.

Ditto.

Originally Posted by HamsterRage

The comparisons to television and radio are completely irrelevant, in my opinion. It's a very specific thing, the actual backbone that connects everything and deserves a capital "I".

Personally, I think a move to use the lowercase merely indicates ignorance of what the Internet actually is.

Ditto.

Originally Posted by happy_terd

What are the grammatical rules for capitalizing words?

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_t...talizing_words

* The word "I" as in "I am" must always be capitalised.
* Names of businesses, people, brands, websites, and anything aside from the common noun should be capitalised.
* The first letter of every sentence must be placed one space away from the full-stop, and, yes, must be capitalised.
* Letters succeeding punctuation marks are only capitalised after full-stops, not commas, colons, semi-colons, apostrophes, speech marks, or brackets.

Since there is only one Internet, I don't think yo can call it a 'common noun'.

Originally Posted by pietvo

So the question is `is "internet" a common noun?'
I think it wasn't a decade ago, but now it is.

No, a 'common noun' would be a horse, a car, a woman, a table, etc. Things of which there are numerous instances. There is only one, single Internet.

Originally Posted by Kirtai

I feel it should be lowercase for internets in general (any network of networks) but the global Internet should be capitalised since it's a singular thing.

Ditto.

But I fear those of us who prefer 'I' are in a minority because most people simply don't know (or care) whether there are one or more internets and don't understand the reasoning behind. So we'd better just get used to it and spend our energy on more productive things. Not that it doesn't irk me