Re: AM: RE: Website? web site? Web-site? website?
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Neil Oatley wrote:
>
> I can't find too much consistency, myself. Everyone seems to have
> their own in-house styles for this and other Net-related terms
> (e-mail/email, online/on-line, url/URL, etc.).
In these examples you're seeing the real-world result of the impact UNIX
has had on the development of the Internet.
(Or InterNet as *I* more often spell it...)
One case is the ACRONYM "URL". This represents the capitalized phrase:
"Universal Resource Locator".
The reason "URL" is often seen and referred to in the lowercase mode is
that UNIX filesystems prefer lowercase characters. And since the
InterNet was originally the result of linking unix-like filesystems,
most acronyms have been "lowercase-isized".
This situation is compounded by the somewhat anarchic populations of the
Internet. Many "Netizens" communicate without following any standards
of punctuation and grammar, routinely, and the trend is expanding.
The upside is that only those of us who prefer to communicate in
somewhat standard English ever really seem to be confused at all.
--
Jim Harmon The Telephone Connection
jim@telecnnct.com Rockville, Maryland
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