Website vs. Web Site

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, Martha. This is Bob from Heartland, Wisconsin.

Hiya, Bob. Welcome.

Hi, Bob. It’s Grant.

Hi, Grant. Nice to talk with you.

So what’s up, Bob?

Well, my business partner and I were sitting around our hotel room one night, and we were looking at our website, and we started talking about the word website and whether or not it was one word or two words.

Mm—

I had said that web was an adjective that describes the noun site, and I thought it was one word.

And so we started looking it up on the Internet, and we found that half the dictionaries had it as one word, the other half had it as two separate words.

And so we thought, well, maybe we would write to you guys and try and find out when does a word become a compound word.

Which side are you on?

I’m on the side that it’s a compound word now because it’s so commonly used, and the adjective and noun had been combined now into just one noun, website.

Well, Ned, do you have Dave there? Can he speak for himself?

Yes, I’m here. My name is Dave, and I’m in Ojai, California.

I think website is two words with a capital W, and I was told this by an old friend of mine who’s a longtime copy editor who swears by AP Style, the Bible of newspaper style, and he said that web is short for World Wide Web, which is a proper noun.

And so web would be capitalized in this instance, and it would be two words website.

Likewise, web page in AP style, the W is capitalized, and they’re two words.

Oh, man.

Oh, man.

I think we’re going to pair off here.

And, Bob, I’m going with you.

And Grant, I think.

Dave, you sound like a brilliant man.

Here’s the argument.

Here’s Grant’s argument.

Here are the facts, and everything else is just like frippery and foolishness, but here are the facts.

The thing is, actually, web in website is a noun acting attributively.

So it’s not really an adjective, though it’s acting a little bit like an adjective.

And my logic actually is a little different than yours, where you say, we don’t make web page one word, which we don’t.

Nobody does.

I do.

It actually gets away with it.

You’re saying that web site should be two words.

Absolutely.

No, no, capital W or not.

Web page is two words.

Oh, come on.

FTP site is two words.

Gopher site is two words.

Bob, help me out.

Well, I got an email from you that has the word newsletter in it, and how is that any different from website?

How is that any different from website, Grant?

Because website is a word that’s fewer than 25 years old.

But, Grant, you of all people.

Newsletters had ages to ages to age and change.

This word was changed arbitrarily without actually judging the evidence properly, and evidence still shows two to one that website is two words is far more common than website is one word.

And web is a proper noun is the proper way to do it.

So my question is, when does a word become commonly used and formed together to make a compound word?

We don’t have one language authority here like other countries do.

So what you do is pick the style guide and the dictionary that seem to match what you already believe, and then you trust their advice on things that you’re not sure about.

That’s right.

Grant is a cafeteria grammarian.

He just picks and chooses what he wants.

Here’s something interesting.

AP Style Guide, and I’m a longtime journalist, so I swear by AP, lists webcam, webcast, and webmaster all as one word.

And they claim it that they are related terms with their own meaning, and they’re not part of the actual web.

That’s right, because cam and cast, at least those in webcast and webcam, those are formatives.

They’re not actually full words.

Webmasters also has a precedent in all the other different words that take master.

So we have a precedent.

With sight, we have very few words that take sight and form one word.

Very few.

Hey, Bob and Dave, this was a great call.

Thanks for…

I know we didn’t solve a darn thing, but…

We didn’t.

But obviously Bob is right.

Dave, I’ll buy you a drink next time I see you, all right?

Sounds good.

Take care.

Take care, you guys.

All right.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

I guess we didn’t help, did we?

But you know what?

I mean, Grant, you and I—

You’re a bitter woman, Barnette.

I am an old and bitter woman.

No, you know, I mean, honestly, Grant, you and I have fought about this so many times in email that I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but if you go back and look at my recent emails lately, I’ve been talking about our site.

I don’t even use web anymore.

I talk about our site, waywordradio.org.

It’s a fool’s game to make prognostications about language, but I’ve done it, and I predicted that actually the term web will fall away completely as part of Arthur C. Clarke’s third law.

And actually the Internet as a whole, including the web, will become so integrated in our lives and our hardware and our furniture that it will basically disappear like electricity.

It will become a part of the furniture, a part of the building, and we won’t really even think about it anymore and how we’re getting the data that we’re getting.

Oh, my gosh.

So sight itself might actually just go poof.

Wait.

Sight or web?

Both.

You’re kidding.

Wow.

Yeah.

And in the meantime, if you’d like to set our houses against each other with a linguistic dispute of your own, call us.

The number is 1-877-929-9673 or email us.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.