Caps and spacing
There's been a fair bit of debate in some circles lately about whether to refer to the World Wide Web as the Web or the web, and related questions, such as whether a collection of pages should be called a Web site or a website.
I still lean toward capitalizing Web and keeping Web site as two words, much as I still capitalize Internet. And I don't buy the argument that all technically savvy people who spend their lives online use web and website; as a technically savvy person who spends most of his life online, I'm a living counterexample.
However, I have to admit that the lowercase and one-word versions are gaining ground. Macromedia switched, by fiat from On High, to lowercase and one-word in all documentation and on its website not long ago. It's not clear to me exactly where the impetus for that change came from, but presumably it's intended to be hip and cutting-edge; presumably Web professionals (Macromedia's target audience) are expected to prefer the new approach.
Another nail in the coffin of the uppercase/two-word approach comes from dictionary.com, which lists Web site as an alternate for website and notes that the trend is toward the one-word lowercase version. I don't particularly trust dictionary.com (a.k.a. the American Heritage Dictionary); their definitions often leave something to be desired, and their etymological histories are often weak. But since my dictionary of choice, MW10, doesn't list the term at all, I can't argue too much about this particular case.
MW10 does list World Wide Web, Web (capitalized), E-mail (capitalized as a noun, lowercased as a verb(!)), and Internet (capitalized). I think it's clear which of these two dictionaries has been updated more recently.
Note that even dictionary.com doesn't support email (no hyphen) as a verb, but I think that's the way we're headed. That's a case where I strongly prefer the run-together version.
At any rate, all this leaves me in a sort of in-between state regarding Web and Web site. I'm used to the uppercase two-word versions, but at work I have to use the lowercase one-word versions, and I generally try to keep my outside-of-work writing in line with style guides from work, to avoid having to switch back and forth. (It helps to have a sensible style guide at work, mind you, which has always been the case for me.) These days, every time I type Web I have to stop and think about whether I want to uppercase it or not. Sigh. I suppose I should just give in to the direction the industry's headed and go with lowercase.
But I'll still draw the line at lowercasing world wide web. Not that anyone uses that term any more.
