Deep breath. Wired news is changing its in-house styleguide in a way that may seem anemic to most people, but to a Web editor like lil' ole me, this is huge. If adopted where I work, it could make the difference between me posting useless information here and me piling through 40,000 software titles for every instance of "Internet," "Web" or "Net." That's a lot of instances! Luckily, the bible says, rightly, that Internet is capitalized. And we are an editor-fearing people.

Tony Long writes:

"Effective with this sentence, Wired News will no longer capitalize the "I" in internet. At the same time, Web becomes web and Net becomes net. Why? The simple answer is because there is no earthly reason to capitalize any of these words. Actually, there never was."

Actually, Tony, I must respectfully say, yuh huh. I do not resist change. And contrary to what the article suggests, I am not simply cap happy. Still, the original impetus to capitalize Internet, Web and Net was a sound one. Unlike other media like radio and television, there is currently only one Internet. It's like the pentabarf, but you just substitute "Internet" wherever it says "Goddess" and "technocratic" where it says "Erisian." It follows then, that the short-form "Net" should also be capitalized. See, it just floats along happily like a little pink cloud. Happy happy.

Web, I could go either way, because it's become more of a modifier than an actual term used to refer to World Wide Web. At least for me, it has. When I refer to the medium, I say "Internet," and when I refer to things, I say "Web:" Web space, Web cam, Web-safe Palette, Ham and Web on Rye, Web a ling a ding dong ... Wait, no I don't. I'm sure someone does though.

But fear not, Tony. I think we can agree that if we're going to make new rules, let's start by making Monday mandatory chocolate milk day. And then we'll just start calling it TEH INTARWEB!!!1! OK, maybe I'm a little cap happy.