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> 9. Capitalizing the first letter in a sentence will reveal where you are This one really surprises me, if someone contacted me without bothering to type a pr

• rbinv 4y ago
  90s/00s IRC is the reason for me. To this day, I don't capitalize regular words when chatting with a friend (no matter the platform or device).
• tuxxi 4y ago
  typing without capitalization can help to create a more informal, somewhat playful tone. same goes for slight misspellings or abbrs instead of spelling out the full word. its just another way to add a small amount of “tone”.
  • marginalia_nu 4y ago
    My impression of people who write like that is that they're 9 years old and somehow made it on the big-boy Internet. Mostly because the content of messages written in that fashion gives that impression as well. It's sloppier than the average youtube comment.
    • wildrhythms 4y ago
      How old are the people you communicate with regularly? I work with plenty of late 20 and 30-something professionals and they all intrinsically understand this phenomenon. I also work in tech, with tech savvy individuals, so maybe that has something to do with it.
    • hollowcelery 4y ago
      What a bizarre take. Who do you work with? The majority of people I’ve worked with of all ages at various companies default to all-lowercase in casual communication, including some of the most intelligent and expressive people. As the other commenter said, it’s perceived as friendlier and more casual. Messages with capitalisation and completely correct grammar in these settings comes off as stilted and corporate.
      • marginalia_nu 4y ago
        I've literally never seen this in 15 years of working.
      • BeFlatXIII 4y ago
        Perceived as friendly and casual by idiots.
        • marginalia_nu 4y ago
          That's needlessly aggressive. :-/
          • maximus-decimus 4y ago
            It just sounds that way because they used a full stop. /s
          • nchie 4y ago
            I'm really surprised at how defensive some people in this thread are getting regarding this.
  • raverbashing 4y ago
    Naturally. But being lazy and not capitalizing first words "just because" is neither of these. Especially when paired with phrases like "who dat". You're just coming across as doing the barely minimum effort to write. Like people that mumble because they can't be bothered with communicating to you.
    • tux3 4y ago
      Not capitalizing on mobile takes extra effort, it is the default. I'd argue that on a keyboard, it is also showing intention and effort. Everyone is so used to proper capitalization, it comes automatically. I don't have to make an effort to press shift when I press 'I', it's entirely subconscious. Capitalization is largely unrelated to effort or lazyness. Except for a few extreme cases whose lack of effort is just as visible in the rest of the prose, or the quality of the ideas. Furthermore, I'd encourage one to spend more effort evaluating the substance of what someone has to say, rather than dismissing their intelligence on account of cultural or stylistic differences. Limiting yourself to a smaller bubble out of disdain seems like self-inflicted imprisonment.
  • kmbfjr 4y ago
    And quite frankly, it is a pain in the ass to read.
• vasco 4y ago
  You should probably spend more time on the internet, or be a bit more relaxed. Many people uncapitalize for stylistic effects, say to portray how you're uninterested or chill you are, which are very common young people signals for "I'm cool". Other than that plenty of non idiots forget to capitalize a sentence.
  • paganel 4y ago
    The “cool” stuff now on the Internet is to avoid the man-child stuff of trying to look cool by copying so-called habits of younger people. I’d say that copying trend is mostly visible in the early- to middle-millennial cohort who are starting to realize that they’re not the center of the world anymore, a boomer-like reaction on a more reduced scale, if you wish.
  • flumpcakes 4y ago
    I spend too much time on the internet. I would strongly argue that using the same style/level of English (punctuation, capitalization, grammar) that a seven year old knows is far more communicative and understandable than using incorrect punctuation and worrying if a full stop means someone is angry. Perhaps people should just read the content of the message and stop worrying about the set-dressing. "They capitalized, they must be a nerd", "she ended that will a full stop, she must be mad!".
    • nchie 4y ago
      So, people should stop being humans? Are you also offended when you hear that the clothes you wear give off an impression?
      • flumpcakes 4y ago
        > Are you also offended when you hear that the clothes you wear give off an impression? What am I offended at? Clothes do give off an impression, just like using basic grammar and punctuation.
    • Zpalmtree 4y ago
• slyall 4y ago
  I was disappointed to see that Sergey Brin (Gen X) didn't capitalise emails (sometimes at least). See the first email in this article: https://www.businessinsider.in/emails-from-googles-eric-schmidt-and-sergey-brin-show-a-shady-agreement-not-to-hire-apple-workers/articleshow/32561275.cms https://www.businessinsider.in/emails-from-googles-eric-schm...
  • switch007 4y ago
    Isn’t this just a kind of power play? I’m so rich/powerful I don’t have to use correct punctuation? Who’s going to correct him?
  • flumpcakes 4y ago
    I would consider that lazy and unprofessional. If a new hire communicated to the C-levels like that they would probably be scolded, but no one is going to scold the CEO. Wasn't the whole Blackberry shtick about having a full qwerty keyboard so the business folk could send messages that didn't look like T9 gibberish?
• qwery 4y ago
  I recently noticed my habit of starting a message or note with a lower case letter. What I found amusing (and what led to me thinking about it) was that I always capitalise the start of the second and subsequent sentences. Also of note: I always capitalise the first person pronoun and often omit the ultimate punctuation
• forgotpwd16 4y ago
  >if someone contacted me This netiquette is on chatting. And chatting in lower has been the case of choice since early IRC days.
  • wildrhythms 4y ago
    Exactly. I get the feeling that a lot of the grinding reactions to this article in the comments here are from people who never lived in the IRC days, or chatted with their friends on AIM, MSN messenger, etc. Not everything is an email, and young people have found ways to convey subtext in shared digital superset of English, nothing wrong with that.
    • flumpcakes 4y ago
      I used IRC. I always capitalized.
      • mechanical_bear 4y ago
        Same. Also same experience for me on ICQ, AIM, and Yahoo.
      • nchie 4y ago
        Not everyone follows the "netiquette" though. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Most of these rules rang very true to me at least. For example, capitalizing letters in _informal_ chats does give off a formal tone. This doesn't mean no one does it, but it's definitely a thing.
• Gigachad 4y ago
  Gen Z here and I had to check my IMs and it’s always capitalised at the start regardless of if it was done automatically. Although I regularly don’t end messages with a . Unless it’s a long message. I certainly wouldn’t think it’s rude. The one thing that was completely true though was the smile thing “good job :)” is extremely toxic. Most of this list is just things people tend to do but wouldn’t notice if you didn’t.
• wafflemaker 4y ago
  What about chatting or just shooting off one off messages? Isn't shift an overkill then?
  • flumpcakes 4y ago
    Yeah, I think I should say that when a longer conversation is _ongoing_ then I think dropping capital letters and full stops is more natural as the conversation flows. If I am trying to communicate something or it's the first message then it's always capitalized with the usual punctuation. Maybe even a semi-colon if I am feeling listy.
• csydas 4y ago
  I think you're being overly harsh on this when it comes to informal communication. As others pointed out, capitalization is similar to white space, punctuation, and other tools that English has when it comes to informal communication. Especially online, you can invoke a lot of imagery and thoughts and emotions by simply playing with the rules of English in a live-chat setting. Try to imagine in a chat the following sentence with different stylizations: "The Customer is always right, so we need to work to correct this" "thE CUsTomer iS aLWays RIght, So WE neEd To WoRK To cOrrECT thiS" "the customer is always right, so we need to work to correct this :))))" The first is quite formal and it's direct; perhaps it could be understood as sarcasm if someone knows you well, but it could also be taken at face value and quite seriously, or it could be taken as a throw-away statement. The second indicates a mocking tone and maybe even resentment, taking the time to mimic a meme and also to purposefully make the sentence silly looking. The third introduces the sarcastic smiley (I disagree with the article's interpretation, as I've always seen :))) to more represent desperation or exasperation) With traditional rules of English, tone is difficult to convey with a single sentence and it's built with the surrounding text as a point of consideration to understand how to interpret a statement; with chat, this is far more difficult to communicate the emotion/intention as chats can be very fast and disconnected, and it's hard to follow the attitude and mood of a person to understand their intended messaging. You could try to divorce the message from the emotions, which might lead to expediting some discussions, but it also leaves a lot of room for incorrect/wrong interpretations. Even if you divorce yourself from such concerns and try to be above it, your conversation partners might not approach it the same way. The evolution of chat might be bastardizing the classic rules of English, but it's quite expressive and personally has made many conversations and relationships much easier with fewer misunderstandings.
  • flumpcakes 4y ago
    I work with a lot of people from abroad, where English isn't their first language. I also have a lot of friends who are foreign too. Trying to read into the "tone" is pointless. Simple sentences, with punctuation and grammar goes a long way. A benefit of not having tone imbued as some intangible quality of how a sentence is written down makes it very easy to communicate with them. If they are pissed off, they just say it. If they are not liking a project at work, they just say it. If you want them to do something, you just say it. These "gen-Z" rules are great if you are 15 and have nothing more to do with your time than worry if Emily fancies you or not by how many chins she gave her ascii text art smile. I was there: when I was a teenager on IRC and MSN messenger I was on hooks at the smallest detail; how long was it taking someone to reply, have they received the message, oh-no they're replying now I better not type out a message, they signed off "ilyvm" not "ily" they must have really liked me today... This sounds quite dismissive, and it is in a way. "Old" people don't need to understand the difference between "k" and "k.". Gen-Z need to communicate to their audience and there's nothing more embarrassing than old people learning young people lingo.
• eastbound 4y ago
  Both my Marroccan employees didn’t capitalize sentences, whereas they capitalized nouns, even in customer-facing apps. Does this concept exist in Arabic languages?
  • wrp 4y ago
    Arabic writing doesn't have capitalization. What language were they writing? It sounds like they noticed that proper nouns were capitalized but maybe felt the other rules about capitalization were too much bother. I even get confused sometimes about capitalizing in titles.
  • Narishma 4y ago
    Arabic doesn't have capital letters.
    • shrimp_emoji 4y ago
      Based. Letter casing a mistake. We only have it because Charlemagne's scribes decided to use a different font for their Latin, and then it stuck, leaving us with double the character set, input handling bugs to fix, and shit to argue about.
• kqr 4y ago
  My defense when I was younger was simply that I didn't even intend to type proper sentences for instant messaging -- I viewed it as a textual representation of speaking[1], not short-form prose. (These days I aim for proper sentences also in instant messaging, acknowledging the asynchronous nature of it. But if I happen to catch my conversation partner active, I might switch to the more informal, "verbal" style.) ---- [1]: You may think you speak in proper sentences, but try to transcribe an audio recording literally some day. You might be surprised!
• saagarjha 4y ago
  lol
• devnullbrain 4y ago
  Your username has improper capitalization.
• skupig 4y ago
  This seems like a very effective way to dismiss people that don't share your background. Also, not speaking basic English does not make one an idiot, there are actually quite a few other languages in the world.
  • flumpcakes 4y ago
    > This seems like a very effective way to dismiss people that don't share your background. Yes, my social-economic status is defined specifically by how I use capital letters.
• petesergeant 4y ago
  > if someone contacted me without bothering to type a proper sentence I would just think they're an idiot Sure, but doesn't that just mark you (and me) as older millenials / gen-X?
• raverbashing 4y ago
  Yeah I agree Those examples just sound real lazy Gen Z writing The other ones I kinda agree (with measure), but this one is awful. Then they ask why "is it so hard to get a job". Job market issues aside, don't come across as a dork.
  • eschatology 4y ago
    > Job market issues aside, don't come across as a dork. Not disagreeing with you, but I think what constitutes as being a dork depends heavily on the situation (workplace culture, etc.). Writing like a Gen Z doesn't necessarily make one a dork. I'd argue that the reverse is true: not writing like everyone else (i.e. completely ignoring the so called "Gen Z Netiquette") makes you a dork for being inept at adapting to the new social norm.
    • raverbashing 4y ago
      > completely ignoring the so called "Gen Z Netiquette True. But I don't do that (quite the opposite, but I don't write like that here, because again, reading the room is important) ;)
    • flumpcakes 4y ago
      > Writing like a Gen Z doesn't necessarily make one a dork. If a Gen Z can't write basic sentences with basic grammar and punctuation then that shows poor English skills. In the work place setting, as the OP was talking about, this is really important. It also shows lack of awareness or respect or empathy because they can't communicate to their intended audience (colleagues/interviewer) using language appropriate for the setting (a professional work place).
• yummypaint 4y ago
  capitalization conveys essentially no information in itself, so it would be a waste to continue mindlessly using it when it could be encoded with additional information. Part of what we are seeing with evolving norms is the fat being cut from written english. is our completely redundant capital chatacter set REALLY being used to its fullest extent right now? An "idiot" does things without knowing or considering why. People choosing to break old capitalization rules to better communicate are a step above those who can't handle that the english they learned in grade school no longer exists.
  • flumpcakes 4y ago
    Your message was literally harder to parse without capitalization.
    • shortcake27 4y ago
      There’s a beautiful irony in claiming people who don’t use capitalisation are idiots/lazy, followed up by complaining that you struggle to parse a sentence without capitalisation. Your views say far more about your own intelligence/laziness than anyone else’s.
      • flumpcakes 4y ago
        > followed up by complaining that you struggle to parse a sentence without capitalisation. Grammar and punctuation exists for a reason. Try reading a book without any.
        • shortcake27 4y ago
          Why are you moving the goalposts? The comment is specifically referring to capitalisation, not all grammar, and punctuation wasn’t even mentioned. I have absolutely zero difficulty parsing uncapitalised text. Most of my communication is and has been uncapitalised for the past 20 years. Including in professional context (Slack, git etc). If you’re struggling, it’s because you’re lazy, not because it’s difficult.
• throwaway98797 4y ago
  i never capitalize even in biz convos it’s a bit of a power move but also makes it easier to establish relationships
• Semaphor 4y ago
  > I would just think they're an idiot. Wait till you encounter would of should of could of -.-
• mechanical_bear 4y ago
  Same with full stops for me.
• idk1 4y ago
  i've just taken the most basic of looks over my DMs in various platforms and i'd put it at 50% starting with caps, and some of those messages are off people i'd consider pretty clever
  • shortcake27 4y ago
    Yes, the idea that capitalisation correlates with intelligence is absurd. OP has a serious superiority complex.
• brmgb 4y ago
  I used to feel the same but I now had to teach two otherwise intelligent juniors that work communication is formal and sentences do start with a capital. So apparently it got lost at some point.