Which of the following is the generally accepted spelling for being
gramatically the 'most' correct.  Please provide link to authoritative
source.  Thank you.
 
website
Website
Web site
web site

Hello respree-ga,

The highest ranking guide on Google's Directory of style guides (
http://directory.google.com/Top/Arts/Writers_Resources/Style_Guides/?il=1
) says that "it is now clear that the standard form is website", and
recommends this spelling.

"Ask the Experts - Frequently Asked Questions - Usage - How should the
term 'website' be written in official documents and on the web?  Whoud
[sic] it be website or web site, and should there be a capital W?"
AskOxford
http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/usage/website?view=

Incidentally, the following two pages note that there is a distinction
between usage on media sites or in non-web media (often "Web site")
and common usage or web copy (generally website).  I just mention this
as an aside, since the authoritative source is what you were looking
for.

"Website, Web site or web site?" (Updated: September 20, 2002)
ob2.net [Tim Murtaugh, Web Developer]
http://www.o2b.net/essays/website/

"Web copy style" [under the heading "website"]
provenance: unknown
http://www.provenanceunknown.com/edit/style.html

I hope that this information is helpful.

- justaskscott-ga


Search terms used on Google:

"style guides"
"style guide" "web site" website

Thank you for your research.  That's interesting about Oxford saying
its "website." Logically, it seems like it should be Web site (i.e.
the Web is a place and a site is a thing in that place, like New York
hotel).  Applying Oxford's logic, does that means its webpages,
webdevelopers, webservers, etc. (just a comment, no need to answer). 
Judging from the 10 to 1 preference of website over Web site, my guess
is that people are just to lazy to hit the Shift and space buttons...
=)  Thanks again.  An interesting diversion.

Hi respree,

Writing that works
http://www.apexawards.com/news_9.htm

Survey Respondents Split Three Ways on Spelling of Web Site 

Is it Web site, web site or website? 

Respondents to the Writing That Works annual usage survey didn't agree
on the answer, but a comparison with votes a year ago indicates that
Web site is holding steady at 39%, website is fading at 32% (a 12%
drop) and web site is running last but gaining ground (up 8% to 29%).

tlspiegel
Google Answers Researcher

Greetings, respree!

4,730 people think that the correct spelling is "wesbite":
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=wesbite&btnG=Google+Search

;-)

ace

Hi Ace.  That is just too funny! =)  Thanks.

Hi Garrick,

http://www.wordbiz.com/newsletter/websitespelling.html
http://www.poewar.com/articles/compound_words.htm

Q. Do you write "Internet" or "internet"? "website" or Web site"?

A. CMS has not established a standard, but is waiting a while for the
dust to settle on these questions. For now, most of us prefer to
uppercase Internet and Web in all instances and we spell "Web site" as
an open compound (but hyphenate "Web-site" as an adjective).
 
http://www.arconics.com/elearning/creating_effective_headings/further_reading_02_full_b.html

I think we're on our own for a while,
V

I like "Web site," and that's what I generally use, but I seem to see
"website" more than any of the other forms. I am a linguistic
stick-in-the-mud, so I'll probably stay with "Web site" until I come
to the point where people make fun of me. ;-)

pinkfred:

Guess who comes up number 1 on "Web site," then they go, "did you mean website."
=)  I think that's hilarious.

://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=%22Web+site%22

Sorry, I meant pinkfreud.  pinkfred must be your brother?

You can call me pinkfred. Just don't call me punkfraud. :-D

So Google itself is on the side of "website." 

"Did you mean website," indeed (as if there has been some mistake.)
Auggh.

This reminds me of a job I had a couple of years ago in which my boss
threw a hissy-fit because I had written "he homed in on the problem."
Boss was down-pat certain that the correct phrase was "honed in on."

Sometimes popular usage drives out proper usage.

... then we have the e-mail, email, E-mail or Email debate:

http://gogle.com/search?q=%22email+vs+e-mail%22+OR+%22e-mail+vs+email%22

(And let's not start on Gogle vs Google!)

Even though in use, I disqualify the following contestants:

Emial (103) -- "send me * emial"
Emal (48) -- "send me * emal"
Wmail (3)  -- "send me * wmail"

I won't even mention "Enail" and "Rmail" as they just get a single hit
each, e.g. "Pleace send me a rmail".

Dear Respree,

The question of quite what is and what isn't a proper noun is a
complicated one.  It is tempting to think that uniqueness is the
criterion, but this is not so: there is but one atmosphere, and we
don't capitalise that.  Just because there is only one web, it does
have to have a capital initial.

Another mistake is to think that capitalised initialisms imply that
the terms they represent need capitals also, so that the abbreviation
"WWW" might imply that the full name must be "World Wide Web".  There
is another error here, as the presence in the initialism of two Ws
extracted from "worldwide" doesn't make it two words.  We all talk of
"TV", but we know it stands for "television", not "Tele Vision" (two
words, two capitals), of course.

An interesting discussion of some of these points - and an expressed
opinion - are at:

http://www.telp.com/editing/proper.htm

As you can see, this was written in 1996.  I would suggest that people
are now even more ready to give "internet" and "worldwide web"
lower-case initials than they were then.  In case you haven't guessed
by now, I'd rule out "Website" and "Web site", and prefer "website" to
"web site".

I hope this helps.

Carnegie