5 ms·

If this is your argument supporting this trend, then I'm speechless ...

by ablekh 6y ago

boneitis 6y ago
If the author otherwise (that is, first word capitalization issue aside) writes grammatically better than >99% of other internet writers, I submit that you can grant them this one shred of self-expressive style. Goes pretty well with the terminal user theme, to boot. It's pretty clear she pays mind to grammar and cares about its proper usage more than most.
- ablekh 6y ago
  I did not say anything about grammar or even punctuation (in general). I have voiced a specific concern of a complete disregard of a proper capitalization. If you call it a "self-expressive style", well, it is your opinion and, of course, you are as entitled to one as everyone else. However, I highly doubt that most people would agree with your characterization of this as a "style". I welcome diversity of self-expression, but I would expect it to be in the form of writing itself (content and/or writing style) and/or visual aids (images), but not in ignoring expected traditional punctuation. BTW, the issue here includes lack of capitalization not only for the first word in a sentence, but also for the pronoun "I".
  - boneitis 6y ago
    Well, I find it to pretty obviously be a self-expressive style, given the rest of its "form of writing itself (content and/or writing style) and/or visual aids (images)." I could be wrong. Oh, well. You might not have brought them up, but I largely (if not only ever) make the criticism regarding capitalization within contexts concerning grammar/punctuation or conveyance. And, given everything else in the article, I think it conveys pretty all right :)
    - ablekh 6y ago
      This issue is not about conveyance, but rather about readability. As simple as that. So, let's agree to disagree. :-)
      - boneitis 6y ago
        I'm of the opinion that there is much overlap between them. If I can have that (the opinion that is, not the concession on your part), then I accept.
        ablekh 6y ago
        I think that you and I are talking about different "readabilities". Yours implies a capability to effectively convey conceptual meaning, whereas mine (in this context) implies UX-focused - that is, purely visual - readability of the text at hand. I hope that this clarifies the source of our presumably different opinions.
        boneitis 6y ago
        I had considered both, as I think they considerably overlap (e: in this case, at least). In fact, if you want to want to completely isolate the two, I had mainly considered the UX-focused and visual aspect. Contending over the ultimate conveyance of meaning in and of itself would have had me arguing for what we both already agree on. Come onnnnn. It's not that bad with the grammar/punctuation, capitalization of acronyms and proper nouns, backtick highlights, and codeblocks.
        ablekh 6y ago
        If you are OK with a text being not that bad, hmm ... it is your choice. Readability is an extremely important UX concept, not to mention the accessibility in this case. For the current version of the text, people with less than great eyesight have to rely only on the (tiny) trailing dot to visually distinguish between sentences. Having proper capitalization within the context would enormously improve the text's accessibility. As for "grammar/punctuation, capitalization of acronyms and proper nouns, backtick highlights, and codeblocks", well ... if the text would lack that, it would have been a completely unreadable wall of text.
brian_cloutier 6y ago
> If this is your argument I was not providing an argument, I was attempting to save time by rebutting the argument I thought you would make. Why do you find this trend "ridiculous" and "disturbing"? Deeper in this thread you state this is somehow worse UX, and makes the text less readable. I... don't see how it's any less readable, could you elaborate? I had thought you might say that this style is distracting, because it is so unusual you're involuntarily pulled from the content and made to focus on the form. I was trying to say, this effect is real, but it is at worst a temporary one. As you note this is a real trend and I expect soon we'll all be used to it. I'm already pretty used to it. It's also a little ironic that you're rebelling against a new capitalization scheme but you're happy to use "BTW". Can you find a dictionary from 10 years ago which includes "BTW"? You're clearly okay with some form of language evolution, why draw the line here?
- ablekh 6y ago
  > Deeper in this thread you state this is somehow worse UX, and makes the text less readable. I... don't see how it's any less readable, could you elaborate? Sure. I argue that this "style" provides poor UX due to decreased readability. Why decreased readability? Well ... Since late Middle Ages (maybe even earlier), people have realized that it is much easier to visually distinguish and consume concepts (in the form of sentences and paragraphs) when they are marked by specially formed characters (capital letters for sentences and initials aka drop caps for paragraphs and chapters). The following link points to the image (as an example) of an illuminated Psalter manuscript from Southern Germany circa 1240-1260: https://www.abebooks.com/images/medieval-manuscripts/german-psalter.png https://www.abebooks.com/images/medieval-manuscripts/german-.... You see what I mean, don't you? Read on ... > ... this is a real trend and I expect soon we'll all be used to it. I strongly disagree - there is no chance we all get used to it. With 99.(9)% of all text in the world using traditional capitalization rules / approach, it is practically infeasible that we all somehow get used to an extremely tiny subset of visual styles that make no sense to our brain. Historically, psychologically and, more importantly, physiologically, humans are wired for chunking information for easier digestion and anything that obstructs that is doomed to fail. Here is a relevant UX-focused article on the subject: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/chunking https://www.nngroup.com/articles/chunking. > It's also a little ironic that you're rebelling against a new capitalization scheme but you're happy to use "BTW" ... You're clearly okay with some form of language evolution, why draw the line here? I draw the line between using a slang abbreviation widely prevalent on the Internet - essentially a de facto standard abbreviation for informal communication (which my brief comment on Hacker News certainly is) - and using an extremely unusual, to put it politely, text capitalization scheme for a long (and much more formal than my comment) blog post.

If this is your argument supporting this trend, then I'm speechless ...

by ablekh 6y ago

If this is your argument supporting this trend, then I'm speechless ...

If the author otherwise (that is, first word capitalization issue aside) writes grammatically better than >99% of other internet writers, I submit that you can grant them this one shred of self-expressive style. Goes pretty well with the terminal user theme, to boot. It's pretty clear she pays mind to grammar and cares about its proper usage more than most.

ablekh 6y ago
I did not say anything about grammar or even punctuation (in general). I have voiced a specific concern of a complete disregard of a proper capitalization. If you call it a "self-expressive style", well, it is your opinion and, of course, you are as entitled to one as everyone else. However, I highly doubt that most people would agree with your characterization of this as a "style". I welcome diversity of self-expression, but I would expect it to be in the form of writing itself (content and/or writing style) and/or visual aids (images), but not in ignoring expected traditional punctuation. BTW, the issue here includes lack of capitalization not only for the first word in a sentence, but also for the pronoun "I".
- boneitis 6y ago
  Well, I find it to pretty obviously be a self-expressive style, given the rest of its "form of writing itself (content and/or writing style) and/or visual aids (images)." I could be wrong. Oh, well. You might not have brought them up, but I largely (if not only ever) make the criticism regarding capitalization within contexts concerning grammar/punctuation or conveyance. And, given everything else in the article, I think it conveys pretty all right :)
  - ablekh 6y ago
    This issue is not about conveyance, but rather about readability. As simple as that. So, let's agree to disagree. :-)
    - boneitis 6y ago
      I'm of the opinion that there is much overlap between them. If I can have that (the opinion that is, not the concession on your part), then I accept.
      - ablekh 6y ago
        I think that you and I are talking about different "readabilities". Yours implies a capability to effectively convey conceptual meaning, whereas mine (in this context) implies UX-focused - that is, purely visual - readability of the text at hand. I hope that this clarifies the source of our presumably different opinions.
        boneitis 6y ago
        I had considered both, as I think they considerably overlap (e: in this case, at least). In fact, if you want to want to completely isolate the two, I had mainly considered the UX-focused and visual aspect. Contending over the ultimate conveyance of meaning in and of itself would have had me arguing for what we both already agree on. Come onnnnn. It's not that bad with the grammar/punctuation, capitalization of acronyms and proper nouns, backtick highlights, and codeblocks.
        ablekh 6y ago
        If you are OK with a text being not that bad, hmm ... it is your choice. Readability is an extremely important UX concept, not to mention the accessibility in this case. For the current version of the text, people with less than great eyesight have to rely only on the (tiny) trailing dot to visually distinguish between sentences. Having proper capitalization within the context would enormously improve the text's accessibility. As for "grammar/punctuation, capitalization of acronyms and proper nouns, backtick highlights, and codeblocks", well ... if the text would lack that, it would have been a completely unreadable wall of text.

brian_cloutier 6y ago

> If this is your argument I was not providing an argument, I was attempting to save time by rebutting the argument I thought you would make. Why do you find this trend "ridiculous" and "disturbing"? Deeper in this thread you state this is somehow worse UX, and makes the text less readable. I... don't see how it's any less readable, could you elaborate? I had thought you might say that this style is distracting, because it is so unusual you're involuntarily pulled from the content and made to focus on the form. I was trying to say, this effect is real, but it is at worst a temporary one. As you note this is a real trend and I expect soon we'll all be used to it. I'm already pretty used to it. It's also a little ironic that you're rebelling against a new capitalization scheme but you're happy to use "BTW". Can you find a dictionary from 10 years ago which includes "BTW"? You're clearly okay with some form of language evolution, why draw the line here?

ablekh 6y ago
> Deeper in this thread you state this is somehow worse UX, and makes the text less readable. I... don't see how it's any less readable, could you elaborate? Sure. I argue that this "style" provides poor UX due to decreased readability. Why decreased readability? Well ... Since late Middle Ages (maybe even earlier), people have realized that it is much easier to visually distinguish and consume concepts (in the form of sentences and paragraphs) when they are marked by specially formed characters (capital letters for sentences and initials aka drop caps for paragraphs and chapters). The following link points to the image (as an example) of an illuminated Psalter manuscript from Southern Germany circa 1240-1260: https://www.abebooks.com/images/medieval-manuscripts/german-psalter.png https://www.abebooks.com/images/medieval-manuscripts/german-.... You see what I mean, don't you? Read on ... > ... this is a real trend and I expect soon we'll all be used to it. I strongly disagree - there is no chance we all get used to it. With 99.(9)% of all text in the world using traditional capitalization rules / approach, it is practically infeasible that we all somehow get used to an extremely tiny subset of visual styles that make no sense to our brain. Historically, psychologically and, more importantly, physiologically, humans are wired for chunking information for easier digestion and anything that obstructs that is doomed to fail. Here is a relevant UX-focused article on the subject: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/chunking https://www.nngroup.com/articles/chunking. > It's also a little ironic that you're rebelling against a new capitalization scheme but you're happy to use "BTW" ... You're clearly okay with some form of language evolution, why draw the line here? I draw the line between using a slang abbreviation widely prevalent on the Internet - essentially a de facto standard abbreviation for informal communication (which my brief comment on Hacker News certainly is) - and using an extremely unusual, to put it politely, text capitalization scheme for a long (and much more formal than my comment) blog post.