A digital dilemma: Website vs. Web Site

Should website be one or two words and either way should it be capitalized? There’s no need to do an Internet search, as the answers follow...

A website is a location on the World Wide Web that one can access, as in Every major business today has its own website.

The term web site means exactly the same thing and is merely a variant spelling.

During the early 2000s, website as a compound/one word became the preferred spelling. Most stylebooks now recommend spelling it as a single word.

The same has occurred with capitalizing it. During the 1990s, the word generally was spelled as Web site. Just as the word has lost the space between its two syllables, so it also has dropped the capital letter. The AP Stylebook, The Chicago Manual of Style, Garner’s Modern English Usage, and several dictionaries all go with website.

I advise sticking with that trend. About the only time you might use Web site is if letters or diary entries were written during the 1990s by a story’s characters.

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