The Writing Center

by Ruth Rogers ’07

Internet references and terms are a source of confusion in writing, since they are so new, at least in relation to the rest of the English language. Here are some guidelines that might be helpful:

The words Internet and Web are proper nouns, and are capitalized.

Web site (two words) and website (one word) are both correct, although the two-word version seems to be more widely used these days. (The APA manual uses the two-word version.) Whether you use one or the other isn’t as important as being consistent; don’t switch back and forth between the two in the same paper. Also note that if you write it as one word it’s not capitalized.

The term Web page is always written as two words. To most people it means the same thing as Web site, but to be strictly technical about it, a Web site is a collection of one or more Web pages, just like a journal is a collection of articles or a library is a collection of books.

The word online is not hyphenated.

Electronic mail can be referred to as e-mail or as email. Either is correct, although the hyphenated version is more commonly accepted. All other e- words use a hyphen, ie. e-media. The prefix cyber is also used for many online terms, but when it is used it is not hyphenated, ie. cyberspace, cyberchat.

The word disc is used when referring to optical media such as CDs and DVDs. For other electronic media it’s spelled disk, as in floppy disk.

And a bit of trivia: In APA references, the only element that does NOT end with a period is a website URL (address).