I in domain names — L vs.

It’s easily confused.

There was a bit of a ruckus yesterday over a typo. NameJet promoted Investor.com for sale, but it turns out the domain was actually Lnvestor.com with an L. As you can see, the font NameJet uses makes a lowercase L look a lot like an uppercase I.

Ahead of I throw stones, I ought to note that I made the same mistake a few years ago. I backordered Lnternational.com thinking it was International.com.

And that fake domain broker that was trying to sell domains at too-good-to-be-true prices? They used the same L vs. I trick

If you think this is confusing, imagine people who aren’t aware of internationalized domain names who buy something that appears to be a valuable domain, only to find out some of the characters in it aren’t from the Roman alphabet.

NameJet has an option to ‘view upper case’ next to the domains. I realize this is an edge case, but perhaps they ought to put both cases next to each other by default.

Oh, and be on the lookout. I don’t think I ever renewed Lnternational.com but it has remained in my Enom count anyway. It expires later this month and will make its way through the drops.