11 ms·

Do other people react as strongly as I did to the lack of capitalisation at the start of sentences? The post is generally "well" written with good grammar and p

Do other people react as strongly as I did to the lack of capitalisation at the start of sentences? The post is generally "well" written with good grammar and punctuation so I find it strange - it feels like a style choice. But the style choice just instinctively makes part of my brain feel like it's written by a child.

navane 3y ago
I didn't even notice. The structure of the post is very strong.
Hamuko 3y ago
Yeah, I don't really have the patience to read through uncapitalised text for long. Enough blog posts around to skip some of them.
vouaobrasil 3y ago
I hate it with a passion and would never read any text without capitalization.
dml2135 3y ago
Ha, that’s funny, I didn’t even notice.
Traubenfuchs 3y ago
It's painful for me, apparently my brain normally uses the low frequency capitalised letters as anchor for "navigation" in big blocks of text.
Max-q 3y ago
Yes! I didn't write a comment here about it, due to the forum rules, but I'm glad you pointed it out.
block_dagger 3y ago
not an e.e. cummings fan i take it.
jwmoz 3y ago
Doesn't matter.
layer8 3y ago
Yes, not using the Shift key has become somewhat of a modern disease. If nothing else, it's a lack of courtesy to the reader. I despise it.
- bombcar 3y ago
  This was the big realization to me why spelling, grammar, etc are important. It’s not that people can’t understand various modifications and incorrect writing, it’s that it is harder for them, so you’re basically asking your readers to give more of their time to save you a bit of yours. And it’s especially bad in a blog or similar, where there is one writer and multiple readers. I spent maybe a few seconds on this post, but it will be read five, ten, fifty times. If I wrote the whole thing in text-message shorthand, it’d be stealing time from each of those readers. It also helps people who do not have English as their first language if you avoid abbreviations and incorrect usage.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
bayindirh 3y ago
My brain tends to self-correct what it's reading these kinds of posts, and considering the author of the post has replied to the comments here in the same style, I see two options for the style. It's either done for speed, or the shift key is mapped to something else, making typing one-off capitals harder. That might equally be a stylistic choice, but I my gut says it's not.
- jynelson 3y ago
  my shift key is there i just have conscientiously objected to it
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    Oh, hey! Thanks for chiming in. It's rare to see rejection of grammar rules on longer forms of writing, so it looked interesting. Any special reasons? Just because I like to know people through their choices and views. Didn't want to sound rude in the previous comment, so if I did, genuinely sorry (non-native speaker woes).
    - jynelson 3y ago
      two reasons: 1. writing in lowercase is freeing. it reminds me that grammatical rules are arbitrary, and by extension other rules. "you can just do things." 2. people who are pedantic about this when it's clearly intentional are probably not people i want to interact with anyway, so it's a good anti-asshole filter (https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1209794.html https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1209794.html)
      - bayindirh 3y ago
        That's interesting take, thanks. I'd love to chat with you further on this issue, but this is neither the place, nor the time. Maybe I'll mail you about this in the soon-ish future if that's OK for you. Cheers!
        3y ago
lawn 3y ago
Yes, absolutely. I feel it's in the same class as not using paragraphs, ignoring punctuation, or having egregious spelling mistakes. It feels lazy and dumb, and honestly it taints whatever point you're trying to make.
actualwitch 3y ago
HN guidelines has this to say about contents of your comment: Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
- Uehreka 3y ago
  Like many invocations of the HN guidelines: “interesting” is in the eye of the beholder and the amount of discussion prompted by this comment and upvotes it garnered would seem to indicate that this stylistic choice is in fact quite interesting. The HN mod team may find it not to their taste, but they don’t get to decide what is or isn’t generally interesting.
- networkchad 3y ago
  [dead]
johnbellone 3y ago
I had to stop reading after second paragraph.
carimura 3y ago
it feels like a "sad" melancholy tone by design. The OPPOSITE of all caps.
wavemode 3y ago
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I barely noticed. I thought so little of it that, after reading your comment, I had to first go back to the article and verify that it even was the case.
fraaancis 3y ago
In a comment on another Rust-related post, the author noted that, "rust definitely skews younger than average. i don't have statistics on hand, but almost all people i know working on the project are younger than 35, and a surprising number are 17-25." I've messed with Rust a bit and I like it. I like the ideas and lack of compromise. But good ideas and a lack of compromises are what you get from youth, along with the arrogance of style choices that make things harder to understand. Will Rust stick around once these folks have bigger responsibilities?
infamouscow 3y ago
If you can't get past the writing style, you're probably not a very successful person given your focus on complete non-essentials.
aftbit 3y ago
Wow a lot of people have very strong feelings about this. Parent comment is fine but some of the replies are quite out there, calling this "arrogant" and "dumb". Let me provide my own opinion. IMO content over style. Nobody owes you adherence to a particular set of rules, nor do they owe you their thoughts at all. If the writer's style is a bridge too far for you, kindly just close the tab, don't complain about it. Certainly don't use hateful words to describe them. Remember, the same English teachers who taught you to capitalize also taught you that there is no singular "they" and that you should use "he/she" instead.
- layer8 3y ago
  > If the writer's style is a bridge too far for you, kindly just close the tab, don't complain about it. I sure hope we are allowed to criticize writers’ styles.
  - nickitolas 3y ago
    I mean ... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
    - machomaster 3y ago
      No capitalization is not a tangential annoyance, it is a major complain akin to complaining about a text written in one block (without anything distinguishing sentences and paragraphs from each other).
      - aftbit 3y ago
        i strongly disagree and i think you do too. whichofthesesentencesdidyoufindeasiertoreadhowcouldyoueventhinkthatinthefirstplace
        3y ago
jihiggins 3y ago
i didn't even notice there was no capitalisation when i read the article idk about the author, but when i was younger, some people's pedantry and pettiness over grammar / capitalisation / more casual chatting got me to switch sides and deliberately stop using it as much. now it's also an aesthetic preference i think there's potentially a valid point about accessibility concerns, but blog posts, chatrooms, and internet comments are also very informal modes of discourse
- Hirrolot 3y ago
  Downvoted your comment because of spelling. Consider learning some English grammar.
  - jihiggins 3y ago
    ^ exactly the type of person i was talking about. how is this considered anything other than troll behaviour? also, there are no spelling mistakes in my comment. perhaps consider learning about how words are spelled in british english vs american english? :)
    - tredre3 3y ago
      > how is this considered anything other than troll behaviour? You're exactly right, deliberately not using capitalization is akin to trolling. Trolling is fun for the troll but it isn't that popular on HN unfortunately.
      - likesprivacy 3y ago
        > ...deliberately not using capitalization is akin to trolling. This just sounds like a self-troll, if you really think this
sowbug 3y ago
You can group these kinds of "errors of personality" to help understand why they might or might not bug you. First: actor intentionally disrespected someone. Speaking in a movie theater, especially after being shushed. Using the letter "u" to mean "you" in formal business communication. Second: actor unintentionally disrespected someone. Clipping your fingernails in class. Badly misspelling someone's name in a critical business communication. Third: actor unintentionally makes an inconsequential error. Native English speakers misusing "it's" or "your" and their respective homophones, or missing antecedents ("As an expert, it's important to do X and Y" rather than "As an expert, I think it's important to do X and Y"). Fourth: actor intentionally makes an inconsequential error. Wearing obviously mismatched socks. Consistently writing in all lowercase. The key, for me, is evaluating intent and impact. Group #1 is asshole: they mean to hurt or annoy. Group #2 is incompetent: they make mistakes that matter. Group #3 is hapless: they make mistakes that don't matter. Group #4 is quirky or aloof: they're not hurting anyone, and they're OK if people draw negative inferences about them, so hey, it's a free country. You might reach different conclusions about the groups, or subdivide the groups further. (Anticipating critiques of my examples: yes, I really do think that misspelling the English pronoun "you" is disrespectful. Misspell your own name if you want to move from Group #1 to Group #4, but please don't misspell the word that you're using to represent me. And clipping your nails in class is such over-the-top behavior that I believe it's more about upbringing than intentional disrespect.)
WuxiFingerHold 3y ago
I admit it annoys me more than it should. It's harder to read, but easier to write. So it's easily interpreted that the author cares more about their convenience than about others. I don't like this attitude.
- rkangel 3y ago
  This is close to how I feel about this sort of thing: the author can't be bothered to write properly, but still wants me to read it. But maybe that's a narrow minded view of the situation, due to my own biases. I wrote the original comment because I wanted to get some view on how a (selection biased) part of the population viewed it. I was surprised by how emotional people got!

navane 3y ago

I didn't even notice. The structure of the post is very strong.

Hamuko 3y ago

Yeah, I don't really have the patience to read through uncapitalised text for long. Enough blog posts around to skip some of them.

vouaobrasil 3y ago

I hate it with a passion and would never read any text without capitalization.

dml2135 3y ago

Ha, that’s funny, I didn’t even notice.

Traubenfuchs 3y ago

It's painful for me, apparently my brain normally uses the low frequency capitalised letters as anchor for "navigation" in big blocks of text.

Max-q 3y ago

Yes! I didn't write a comment here about it, due to the forum rules, but I'm glad you pointed it out.

block_dagger 3y ago

not an e.e. cummings fan i take it.

jwmoz 3y ago

Doesn't matter.

layer8 3y ago

Yes, not using the Shift key has become somewhat of a modern disease. If nothing else, it's a lack of courtesy to the reader. I despise it.

bombcar 3y ago
This was the big realization to me why spelling, grammar, etc are important. It’s not that people can’t understand various modifications and incorrect writing, it’s that it is harder for them, so you’re basically asking your readers to give more of their time to save you a bit of yours. And it’s especially bad in a blog or similar, where there is one writer and multiple readers. I spent maybe a few seconds on this post, but it will be read five, ten, fifty times. If I wrote the whole thing in text-message shorthand, it’d be stealing time from each of those readers. It also helps people who do not have English as their first language if you avoid abbreviations and incorrect usage.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

bayindirh 3y ago

My brain tends to self-correct what it's reading these kinds of posts, and considering the author of the post has replied to the comments here in the same style, I see two options for the style. It's either done for speed, or the shift key is mapped to something else, making typing one-off capitals harder. That might equally be a stylistic choice, but I my gut says it's not.

jynelson 3y ago
my shift key is there i just have conscientiously objected to it
- bayindirh 3y ago
  Oh, hey! Thanks for chiming in. It's rare to see rejection of grammar rules on longer forms of writing, so it looked interesting. Any special reasons? Just because I like to know people through their choices and views. Didn't want to sound rude in the previous comment, so if I did, genuinely sorry (non-native speaker woes).
  - jynelson 3y ago
    two reasons: 1. writing in lowercase is freeing. it reminds me that grammatical rules are arbitrary, and by extension other rules. "you can just do things." 2. people who are pedantic about this when it's clearly intentional are probably not people i want to interact with anyway, so it's a good anti-asshole filter (https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1209794.html https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1209794.html)
    - bayindirh 3y ago
      That's interesting take, thanks. I'd love to chat with you further on this issue, but this is neither the place, nor the time. Maybe I'll mail you about this in the soon-ish future if that's OK for you. Cheers!
      - 3y ago

lawn 3y ago

Yes, absolutely. I feel it's in the same class as not using paragraphs, ignoring punctuation, or having egregious spelling mistakes. It feels lazy and dumb, and honestly it taints whatever point you're trying to make.

actualwitch 3y ago

HN guidelines has this to say about contents of your comment: Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.

Uehreka 3y ago
Like many invocations of the HN guidelines: “interesting” is in the eye of the beholder and the amount of discussion prompted by this comment and upvotes it garnered would seem to indicate that this stylistic choice is in fact quite interesting. The HN mod team may find it not to their taste, but they don’t get to decide what is or isn’t generally interesting.
networkchad 3y ago
[dead]

johnbellone 3y ago

I had to stop reading after second paragraph.

carimura 3y ago

it feels like a "sad" melancholy tone by design. The OPPOSITE of all caps.

wavemode 3y ago

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I barely noticed. I thought so little of it that, after reading your comment, I had to first go back to the article and verify that it even was the case.

fraaancis 3y ago

In a comment on another Rust-related post, the author noted that, "rust definitely skews younger than average. i don't have statistics on hand, but almost all people i know working on the project are younger than 35, and a surprising number are 17-25." I've messed with Rust a bit and I like it. I like the ideas and lack of compromise. But good ideas and a lack of compromises are what you get from youth, along with the arrogance of style choices that make things harder to understand. Will Rust stick around once these folks have bigger responsibilities?

infamouscow 3y ago

If you can't get past the writing style, you're probably not a very successful person given your focus on complete non-essentials.

aftbit 3y ago

Wow a lot of people have very strong feelings about this. Parent comment is fine but some of the replies are quite out there, calling this "arrogant" and "dumb". Let me provide my own opinion. IMO content over style. Nobody owes you adherence to a particular set of rules, nor do they owe you their thoughts at all. If the writer's style is a bridge too far for you, kindly just close the tab, don't complain about it. Certainly don't use hateful words to describe them. Remember, the same English teachers who taught you to capitalize also taught you that there is no singular "they" and that you should use "he/she" instead.

layer8 3y ago
> If the writer's style is a bridge too far for you, kindly just close the tab, don't complain about it. I sure hope we are allowed to criticize writers’ styles.
- nickitolas 3y ago
  I mean ... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
  - machomaster 3y ago
    No capitalization is not a tangential annoyance, it is a major complain akin to complaining about a text written in one block (without anything distinguishing sentences and paragraphs from each other).
    - aftbit 3y ago
      i strongly disagree and i think you do too. whichofthesesentencesdidyoufindeasiertoreadhowcouldyoueventhinkthatinthefirstplace
      - 3y ago

jihiggins 3y ago

i didn't even notice there was no capitalisation when i read the article idk about the author, but when i was younger, some people's pedantry and pettiness over grammar / capitalisation / more casual chatting got me to switch sides and deliberately stop using it as much. now it's also an aesthetic preference i think there's potentially a valid point about accessibility concerns, but blog posts, chatrooms, and internet comments are also very informal modes of discourse

Hirrolot 3y ago
Downvoted your comment because of spelling. Consider learning some English grammar.
- jihiggins 3y ago
  ^ exactly the type of person i was talking about. how is this considered anything other than troll behaviour? also, there are no spelling mistakes in my comment. perhaps consider learning about how words are spelled in british english vs american english? :)
  - tredre3 3y ago
    > how is this considered anything other than troll behaviour? You're exactly right, deliberately not using capitalization is akin to trolling. Trolling is fun for the troll but it isn't that popular on HN unfortunately.
    - likesprivacy 3y ago
      > ...deliberately not using capitalization is akin to trolling. This just sounds like a self-troll, if you really think this

sowbug 3y ago

You can group these kinds of "errors of personality" to help understand why they might or might not bug you. First: actor intentionally disrespected someone. Speaking in a movie theater, especially after being shushed. Using the letter "u" to mean "you" in formal business communication. Second: actor unintentionally disrespected someone. Clipping your fingernails in class. Badly misspelling someone's name in a critical business communication. Third: actor unintentionally makes an inconsequential error. Native English speakers misusing "it's" or "your" and their respective homophones, or missing antecedents ("As an expert, it's important to do X and Y" rather than "As an expert, I think it's important to do X and Y"). Fourth: actor intentionally makes an inconsequential error. Wearing obviously mismatched socks. Consistently writing in all lowercase. The key, for me, is evaluating intent and impact. Group #1 is asshole: they mean to hurt or annoy. Group #2 is incompetent: they make mistakes that matter. Group #3 is hapless: they make mistakes that don't matter. Group #4 is quirky or aloof: they're not hurting anyone, and they're OK if people draw negative inferences about them, so hey, it's a free country. You might reach different conclusions about the groups, or subdivide the groups further. (Anticipating critiques of my examples: yes, I really do think that misspelling the English pronoun "you" is disrespectful. Misspell your own name if you want to move from Group #1 to Group #4, but please don't misspell the word that you're using to represent me. And clipping your nails in class is such over-the-top behavior that I believe it's more about upbringing than intentional disrespect.)

WuxiFingerHold 3y ago

I admit it annoys me more than it should. It's harder to read, but easier to write. So it's easily interpreted that the author cares more about their convenience than about others. I don't like this attitude.

rkangel 3y ago
This is close to how I feel about this sort of thing: the author can't be bothered to write properly, but still wants me to read it. But maybe that's a narrow minded view of the situation, due to my own biases. I wrote the original comment because I wanted to get some view on how a (selection biased) part of the population viewed it. I was surprised by how emotional people got!