4 ms·

I could take this a lot more seriously if capital letters were properly used.

kompatible 4y ago
Isn't worrying about someone else's grammatical use of capitalization when the piece is understood anyway a little too pedantic?
- timw4mail 4y ago
  I find the text more awkward to read without capital letters starting sentences, especially in paragraph form.
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
  - vo2maxer 4y ago
    I can’t agree more. An author who can’t be bothered to follow well established forms of style, grammar, and punctuation in a technical article somehow deflates whatever else they have to say even if accurate. It’s not as if they are trying to emulate the works of E. E. Cummings, James Joyce, or Arno Schmidt.
    - giraffe_lady 4y ago
      y'all are the most boring people on the planet istg. in the entire legion of internet writers making in depth technical content there is what, one who deviates from the conventions and you can't handle it. This author is a much much better writer than average for free technical content! They have an interesting, unique style! The typography and punctuation are part of that style! It would be tangibly worse if they adhered to the (bad, and also arbitrary!) typographical conventions of raw html just to please a bunch of square-ass nerds. Shit just makes me sad seriously.
      - ntoskrnl 4y ago
        > y'all are the most boring people on the planet Citation needed. Please cite your source and make sure you strictly follow MLA format
      - glouwbug 4y ago
        Best part is, every programmer has their own unique style as well. It doesn't stop us from running clang-format though
      - subjectsigma 4y ago
        We like what we like and we're allowed to like it. Same goes to you and her.
      - bigDinosaur 4y ago
        The reason it's important to stick to established standards is precisely to avoid discussions like this. It's a total waste of engineering time, so, in this case, be boring.
      - delta_p_delta_x 4y ago
        > They have an interesting, unique style! The typography and punctuation are part of that style! Her 'interesting, unique' 'typography and punctuation' makes me want to poke my eyes out instead of focusing on the content itself. You sneer at conventions, but they were developed after centuries of typesetting and typewriting. Her entire style sheet is an abomination: - The serif typeface she has used, EB Garamond, is best used for printed text. I am working on a 27" 1080p monitor, and the low DPI makes for very painful reading. Sans-serif humanist typefaces like Verdana (used at Hacker News, thank goodness) or Open Sans are best. Better still, use the OS typeface in `font-family` (`-apple-system`, Segoe UI, SF Pro, Roboto, Lucida, Ubuntu, Open Sans, etc) instead of dragging in your own. If one so desperately wants a serif typeface, please use something that's nice and blocky, like Droid Serif or IBM Plex Serif. Incidentally, I have the same qualms with the default typeface in LaTeX: the Computer Modern provided is far too spindly for digital reading. There is an alternative, MLModern[0] that is thicker, but it only has Type 1 glyphs rather than OpenType. - The colours she has chosen are not as bad, but they are certainly distracting. Can't go wrong with a monochrome dark grey/white, or even straightforward black on white. - Uppercase/lowercase letters and proper punctuation help break up the prose, and improve the reading experience by differentiating proper nouns, beginnings of sentences, etc etc. Dismissing this by saying 'Oooh, look at me, I'm different for different's sake' is just exasperating. Incidentally, I'm probably of a similar age group as the writer, but I like to follow grammatical and typographical rules in long prose (I don't care as much in personal texts), because they make sense. [0]: https://ctan.org/pkg/mlmodern?lang=en https://ctan.org/pkg/mlmodern?lang=en
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Lio 4y ago
  I know this is not always intended but I read all lowercase as being passive aggressive in tone. Much like all capitals is seen as shouting. It’s a way of saying, you are not worth talking to properly.
lupire 4y ago
Why? It's clearly not meant to be taken seriously.
billti 4y ago
I was actually thinking the opposite. I got quite a way through the article before I realized "Hang on - None of the paragraphs and sentences start with uppercase letters!" As a father trying to teach two small children to read and write, I've begun to think it's kind of annoying and unnecessary to have two different forms. It's easy enough to teach when they are just bigger glyphs, e.g. O -> o, C -> c, S -> s, etc. But having uppercase and lowercase that are entirely different is just a pain in the ass, e.g. A -> a, D -> d, G -> g, R -> r, etc. I do wonder if literacy might be improved if we got rid of uppercase, to little to no detriment elsewhere. (I'm sure someone here can probably sight some data on that!)
- autoexec 4y ago
  Uppercase letters are nice for emphasis. If we got away with having a set of both I'd vote for keeping the uppercase ones since they are easier to write. Mostly just simple straight lines. Especially useful when you're carving letters into something.
userbinator 4y ago
When I see writing like that, I think the author is either German[1], uses IM far too much, or is trying very hard to exude the "edgy teenager" stereotype. The entire site is in that style, and combined with the definitely unusual domain name, makes it very hard to take this person seriously. [1] apparently an "overcompensation" coming from a language in which all nouns are capitalised.

Isn't worrying about someone else's grammatical use of capitalization when the piece is understood anyway a little too pedantic?

timw4mail 4y ago
I find the text more awkward to read without capital letters starting sentences, especially in paragraph form.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
- vo2maxer 4y ago
  I can’t agree more. An author who can’t be bothered to follow well established forms of style, grammar, and punctuation in a technical article somehow deflates whatever else they have to say even if accurate. It’s not as if they are trying to emulate the works of E. E. Cummings, James Joyce, or Arno Schmidt.
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    y'all are the most boring people on the planet istg. in the entire legion of internet writers making in depth technical content there is what, one who deviates from the conventions and you can't handle it. This author is a much much better writer than average for free technical content! They have an interesting, unique style! The typography and punctuation are part of that style! It would be tangibly worse if they adhered to the (bad, and also arbitrary!) typographical conventions of raw html just to please a bunch of square-ass nerds. Shit just makes me sad seriously.
    - ntoskrnl 4y ago
      > y'all are the most boring people on the planet Citation needed. Please cite your source and make sure you strictly follow MLA format
    - glouwbug 4y ago
      Best part is, every programmer has their own unique style as well. It doesn't stop us from running clang-format though
    - subjectsigma 4y ago
      We like what we like and we're allowed to like it. Same goes to you and her.
    - bigDinosaur 4y ago
      The reason it's important to stick to established standards is precisely to avoid discussions like this. It's a total waste of engineering time, so, in this case, be boring.
    - delta_p_delta_x 4y ago
      > They have an interesting, unique style! The typography and punctuation are part of that style! Her 'interesting, unique' 'typography and punctuation' makes me want to poke my eyes out instead of focusing on the content itself. You sneer at conventions, but they were developed after centuries of typesetting and typewriting. Her entire style sheet is an abomination: - The serif typeface she has used, EB Garamond, is best used for printed text. I am working on a 27" 1080p monitor, and the low DPI makes for very painful reading. Sans-serif humanist typefaces like Verdana (used at Hacker News, thank goodness) or Open Sans are best. Better still, use the OS typeface in `font-family` (`-apple-system`, Segoe UI, SF Pro, Roboto, Lucida, Ubuntu, Open Sans, etc) instead of dragging in your own. If one so desperately wants a serif typeface, please use something that's nice and blocky, like Droid Serif or IBM Plex Serif. Incidentally, I have the same qualms with the default typeface in LaTeX: the Computer Modern provided is far too spindly for digital reading. There is an alternative, MLModern[0] that is thicker, but it only has Type 1 glyphs rather than OpenType. - The colours she has chosen are not as bad, but they are certainly distracting. Can't go wrong with a monochrome dark grey/white, or even straightforward black on white. - Uppercase/lowercase letters and proper punctuation help break up the prose, and improve the reading experience by differentiating proper nouns, beginnings of sentences, etc etc. Dismissing this by saying 'Oooh, look at me, I'm different for different's sake' is just exasperating. Incidentally, I'm probably of a similar age group as the writer, but I like to follow grammatical and typographical rules in long prose (I don't care as much in personal texts), because they make sense. [0]: https://ctan.org/pkg/mlmodern?lang=en https://ctan.org/pkg/mlmodern?lang=en
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Lio 4y ago
I know this is not always intended but I read all lowercase as being passive aggressive in tone. Much like all capitals is seen as shouting. It’s a way of saying, you are not worth talking to properly.

lupire 4y ago

Why? It's clearly not meant to be taken seriously.

billti 4y ago

I was actually thinking the opposite. I got quite a way through the article before I realized "Hang on - None of the paragraphs and sentences start with uppercase letters!" As a father trying to teach two small children to read and write, I've begun to think it's kind of annoying and unnecessary to have two different forms. It's easy enough to teach when they are just bigger glyphs, e.g. O -> o, C -> c, S -> s, etc. But having uppercase and lowercase that are entirely different is just a pain in the ass, e.g. A -> a, D -> d, G -> g, R -> r, etc. I do wonder if literacy might be improved if we got rid of uppercase, to little to no detriment elsewhere. (I'm sure someone here can probably sight some data on that!)

autoexec 4y ago
Uppercase letters are nice for emphasis. If we got away with having a set of both I'd vote for keeping the uppercase ones since they are easier to write. Mostly just simple straight lines. Especially useful when you're carving letters into something.

userbinator 4y ago

When I see writing like that, I think the author is either German[1], uses IM far too much, or is trying very hard to exude the "edgy teenager" stereotype. The entire site is in that style, and combined with the definitely unusual domain name, makes it very hard to take this person seriously. [1] apparently an "overcompensation" coming from a language in which all nouns are capitalised.