Tomato vs. Tomahto
 

You say tomato and I say tomahto. Tomato. Tomahto and so the song goes.

Anyway you slice it the same can be said for the Web or the web. Check out ten websites or ten Web sites and you're bound to see two or three different ways of capitalization and syntax.

I edit for two editors (hello Eileen and Cynthia) who swear by "website" but yet my ancient spell-check disagrees with that.

What do you prefer?

• website
• web site
• Web site

Or don't you even care?
Then there's the Internet or the internet, the latter choice is considered wrong by my spell-check. But who really depends on spell-check? I was writing Web content and used the word "acappella" (without instrumental accompaniment) and spell-check incorrectly offered Acapulco.

Unfortunately there is no fundamental style guide when it comes to the Web…except consistency. If you write it, they might read it, so be consistent. Spelling and capitalization that looks the same, will appear more right than wrong.

iMac on Ebay – oy vay
Web writing has truly bastardized capitalization. Our grammatical forefathers and mothers would plutz if they knew we were routinely starting sentences with lower case letters. Trends in digital style has seen iMarketing, eMarketing, Ebay, iMac, e-mail. With examples like this, don't expect traditional English usage to be taught or learned in schools anytime soon. Too much confusion abounds.

Think different
If we learned anything from the iMac marketers, it's that beige is no longer the status quo for computers and that indigo and grape are. (Since we're talking about merchandise—I'd like to see sparkling magenta to match my nail polish.)

Along the way iMac, with its brilliant and memorable tagline has erased all conceivable notions of using adverbs properly. If you recall and even if you don't—the word "think" is a verb and up until the digital age, adverbs have been used to describe verbs.

The correct usage should be "Think Differently" but then even I, a former teacher-current-marketing goddess/writer/editor, agrees that slogan is less effective.

To be or not to be, and now that I scrutinize that famous phrase—it's a statement not a question.

Tomato, Tomahto is Copyright © BridgeMarketing.com 2001

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