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Aside: what is with the trend of omitting capitalization from blog posts? I get it when people are writing tweets/texts/whatever short-form media, but for a ful
by ashton314 1y ago
Aside: what is with the trend of omitting capitalization from blog posts? I get it when people are writing tweets/texts/whatever short-form media, but for a full blog post? I find it makes it harder to read. Am I alone in this?
- eddythompson80 1y agowhy use many words when few do trick
- gerdesj 1y ago"few do trick". Are you implying, with that statement, that few words might trick a reader into a different interpretation from the one they might reach otherwise or that few words are enough (do the trick)? I'm all in favour of parsimony but please deploy the bare useful minimum with an eye to clarity and not obfuscation. Also note that a full stop (period) is an indicator that you have finished dribbling.
- eddythompson80 1y agoJust joke. No imply. https://youtu.be/_K-L9uhsBLM https://youtu.be/_K-L9uhsBLM
- frollogaston 1y agoThis is my first time seeing that, not fond of it
- hammyhavoc 1y agoMake the LLM bulletpoint output seem more human that it is?
- shawkinaw 1y agoYeah, I tried to read the post and was immediately put off by the lack of capitalization. Then I came to the comments and had to fight the urge to ask “why not capitals”
- lowercaser 1y agowithout autocorrect everything i type is in lowercase because it requires less effort think of all of the time and effort you wasted in life hitting the shift key why also punctuation
- john-h-k 1y agoWhy? Because it makes reading significantly easier
- ashton314 1y agoand also why should we care about readers i mean they should be able to parse and backtrack through my sentences to figure out where one thought ends and another begins run on sentences are just propoganda by big puncutation and big english to sell more periods and why bother with roppper spelling or grammer it get in the way you can probably just infer what im trying to get at here so why should i expend any effor tto make life easier for my readers
- esseph 1y agoCounter argument: Unless you are writing for yourself, then you are communicating with others. If you want others to be able to understand what you are saying, then you would benefit from doing what every presenter is taught to do for any event or slide deck - cater to your audience. In the case of long form written media, that means using punctuation and capitals.
- frollogaston 1y agoOn a phone sure, on a PC it's the same amount of time
- CAPSLOCKON 1y agoWHY WITH VERY LITTLE EFFORT YOU CAN USE CAPSLOCK IT GETS MORE ATTENTION AND YOU CAN STILL ABSTAIN FROM PUNCTUATION
- jeltz 1y agoihavedecidedtoskipspacestootowasteevenlesseffortinlifewhywasteprecioussecondshittibgthespacekey
- tptacek 1y agoPlease 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. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- abnercoimbre 1y agoAn entire article that omits capitalizing anything at all is likely noteworthy.
- pezezin 1y agoSorry, but I disagree. When the blog post omits the most basic spelling rules of the language it is written in, it is worth complaining, lest we end up normalising such behaviour.
- NaOH 1y ago>...it is worth complaining, lest we end up normalising such behaviour. Discussions about spelling, grammar, and punctuation on other sites transgress the HN goal to normalize thoughtful, curiosity-driven discussion here.
- pezezin 1y agoThen we can submit whatever random crap we find online in the name of "curiosity"? There is no filter whatsoever?
- NaOH 1y agoThe thoughtful component that was mentioned is critical. For that I defer to one of pg's original statements: "Thoughtful in both senses: civil and substantial." The substantial aspect of thoughtful content is inherently absent from "crap." https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
- GlacierFox 1y ago
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- gerdesj 1y agoOP uses bold text for emphasis like an ill-advised user of a marker pen and deploys a very bizarre collection of quotation marks. Sometimes "..." and sometimes “...”. If you are going to studiously ignore convention, please do it consistently weirdly. The list of issues is not a list. Oh well. In the end the message is the thing and not the medium. Ideally the medium might be a bit more conventional to enable readers to follow the argument and not have to mentally adjust the text.
- ashton314 1y ago> In the end the message is the thing and not the medium Ah, but to quote the philosopher Marshal McLuhan, the medium is the message. What does a tweet say? “This is a bite-sized idea that’s easy to understand.” What does a poorly-punctuated blog post say? “These ideas are sloppy.” What does a book say? “This is a more serious argument than you find online.” (alternatively, “I am looking for profit.”) What does a HN comment say? “This is my hot-take trying to sound smart.”
- kop316 1y agoSince you didn't seem to get an actual answer, here is a discussion on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43114156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43114156 . I can't find another discussion, but some folks seem to think a lack of capitalization also makes the post more informal. I personally agree that it makes it much harder to read.