Internet

The Internet is an abbreviation of ‘inter-network’, which is simply a network of computers, connected to one another. These days, it is often mistakenly used as a synonym for the World Wide Web, which is not the same thing at all. The Internet is simply the hardware system, the World Wide Web is data and information that can be found on that system in the form of websites and web pages. The origin of the word ‘Internet’ is open to debate but most sources refer to a paper written by three students at Stanford University, Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal, and Carl Sunshine. The paper was entitled, ‘Internet Transmission Control Program’ and published in 1974. The word only began to be used widely from the early 1980s. The OED advises that ‘Internet’ is a proper noun and therefore should be used with a capital ‘I’ but when used as an adjective, for example, in ‘internet services’, a lower-case ‘i’ is preferable. The OED adds, however, that this may change in time because many magazines and newspapers are using the lower case convention to refer to ‘the internet’. A similar convention is in place for the World Wide Web, but not for ‘webpages’ and ‘websites’. See also World Wide Web and Surfing the Internet.