Newsletter of the East Bay Chapter of STC
September/October 2002
Online Writing:
The Great “Web” vs. “web” Debate
by Scott Wallace
EBSTC Member
One of the delights of having your own web site is exchanging email with strangers who share your interest in the subject matter of the site.
Three summers ago I published online my WebStyle Guide, which, though it’s growing a bit frayed around the edges, remains the most comprehensive style guide on the Internet for writers and editors developing content for or about the world of technology. Since then I’ve corresponded with people from Paris to Fiji, from Wellington to Montreal, on a variety of matters relating to “web style.”
No subject has been the source of more spirited discourse than when to capitalize web. Usually, though, people don’t want to debate the topic. They just want someone—anyone—to give them an answer. Here’s what I tell them.
Two Popular Approaches
Web is used both as a proper noun (Web, referring to the World Wide Web) and a common noun (web, referring to other computer networks based on the same underlying technology as the Web, e.g., intranets and extranets).
But basing style decisions on this distinction can lead to confusion and the appearance of inconsistency. Someone who maintains a company’s intranet server would, technically, be a webmaster, while someone sitting in the next cubicle running the company’s World Wide Web server would be a Webmaster. Obviously, something more straightforward is called for.
1) The simplest approach is to choose between an uppercase W and a lowercase w and use it in all instances involving the word web. So it’s either a) Web site, Web technology, and surfing the Web or b) web site, web technology, and surfing the web, period, end of discussion.
The American Heritage Dictionary and Oxford Dictionary of Current English use a lowercase w for all terms relating to computer “webs” (networks) except World Wide Web, whereas Webster’s New World Computer Dictionary and the Encyclopedia of Technical Terms go with uppercase.
While this approach certainly makes the writer’s job easier, it lacks the precision that every punctilious technical communicator strives for.
2) A more precise alternative that’s gaining currency is to capitalize the word when using it as a noun and lowercase it when using it as (or as part of) an adjective: surfing the Web and on the Web but web site and web technology.
Both the Web Content Style Guide and Dictionary of Computer and Internet Terms advocate this style.
A Better Choice
More precise still is a third approach, which is the one I recommend to those who seek my opinion:
- Use Web only when a noun or adjective refers specifically to the World Wide Web—Web site, navigating the Web, Web presence.
- Use web in situations where the word could be applied generically either to the Web or to other browser-based networks—web master, web technology, web browser.
Based on examples given, this appears to be the approach favored by the Associated Press Stylebook, though AP doesn’t state its rationale for capitalizing some words and not others.
Other Tech-Style Issues
Web vs. web may be the most debated style question related to the Internet and associated technologies, but it’s certainly not the only one. Consider also Website vs. Web site, e-mail vs. email, web master vs. webmaster, and online vs. on line. Then there are general matters of style, such as whether to italicize URLs and email addresses.
These broader issues will be the focus of parts two and three of this
article, which will appear in the November/December and January/February
issues of Devil Mountain Views. Included will be a number of
resources that should help reduce some of the head-scratching that often
afflicts those writing about things technological.
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