Microsoft Word Says The Internet Is God
The Internet is God. At least according to Microsoft Office. I’ve been noticing recently that every time I type “the internet” into a word doc. The grammar check function underlines it in green. When I right click it tells me I need to capitalize the word Internet.
I have a B.A. in English, and I like to think I have a relatively good grasp on the English language, but I couldn’t think of why this word should be capitalized. I googled “grammar what to capitalize” and this site came up with several rules for what should be capitalized and what shouldn’t. I suppose you could argue that Word is considering the iNtErNeT to be a proper noun. But I wasn’t so sure that’s accurate so I googled “what is a proper noun”, and this is what I found:
A proper noun is the “name of a specific individual, place, or object” i.e. Joseph, New York City, Empire State Building. Well, the INTERnet is not a person (although sometimes I think of it as my only friend)…It’s not a place. I can’t take a vacation to the interNET (but I do need to take vacations from it). And I don’t think it’s an object. I can’t hold the inTERNet in my hand (my Blackberry doesn’t count).
So why is Word prompting me to capitalize the InTeRnEt? I started thinking of other things Word automatically capitalizes. Names, titles, organizations…but most disturbingly, this:
Creepy, right?
P.S. Upon spell checking this blog post, Tumblr, my blogging platform, also believes the Internet is God. Guess we should all start praying to our computers.
