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Grammar SOS > Web Style
AP does have a style guideline for computing and Internet words, even though some publications clearly are struggling to conform to any policy, AP's or their own. These are from the AP Stylebook and make sense:
- Internet: always upper case
- Web (and World Wide Web): proper noun (unique entity), so capitalize the Web, Web site (two words)
- Webcast, webmaster (one word, lower case if not beginning a sentence)
- E-mail (or e-mail if not beginning a sentence)
Web addresses:
- URLs: AP says unless necessary, you can drop the http://.
- Citing within stories, AP says to use the full URL if such a citation means something to the story. If not, include URL at bottom of story, as a feature for readers.
The protesters have a news group for anyone interested at http://talking.ucs.indiana.edu.
- She is editor of Cybergrrl.com.
Other opinions:
Copy editor and author Bill Walsh favors this approach:
- Decide if you are dealing with a name or an address. Does the page have a "title?" (National Organization for Women, Editor & Publisher Online)
- For Internet-based companies or entities, the ".com" or other extension may be part of the name, in which case, it would be used as a proper noun: Amazon.com, Cybergrrl.com.
- Internet addresses that are simply addresses should be lowercased, but if the name and the address are functionally the same (typing the name Amazon.com into a browser, for example, will get a Web user to the address www.amazon.com), use the name.
And another idea:
Some have suggested using italics for the Web site name, or the URL, or some other method of setting off this information from the rest of the copy.
- She works at cybergrrl.com.
Fine, but italics (and quotes) are reserved for books, plays, movies or TV shows (depending on your in-house style) and Web sites don't fall into those categories.
How about this: We don't list addresses or phone numbers for other sources we cite, so why do we care about listing URLs? Why don't we simply refer to the name of the site? If the URL is important (as sometimes, addresses or phone numbers are), we can list those as we see fit.
- According to the American Red Cross Web site, over 15,000 volunteers are in El Salvador this week to help earthquake survivors.
- Pictures of the entertainer with Elton John are available at Eminem's Web site.
- The WIBC-AM radio station was the first to break the news of Bob Knight's firing, according to the station's Web site.
Stay tuned on this topic. The Internet and Web have infiltrated our lives very quickly, so it's not unusual that many organizations still are working to categorize and deal with the "new" terms.
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