4 ms·
to me, the goal of written text is to put an idea or a concept in the mind of another person. _capitalization_ is one of those "arbitrary rules" that add absolu
by lab14 7mo ago
to me, the goal of written text is to put an idea or a concept in the mind of another person. _capitalization_ is one of those "arbitrary rules" that add absolutely nothing to this process unless you're using an obscure acronym.
in my mind, it's one of those ancient rules that are completely obsolete in the modern world. its only purpose is to allow others to say "i am better than you because i use this ancient rule that someone came up with a thousand years ago, so i'm smart and you're dumb".
being a non-native english speaker, removing capitalization from my writing removed a ton of anxiety when writing text and didn't change at all the landing of my messages or my ideas.
- bitroughj 7mo agoWong
- redwood 7mo agoMy personal take is that it's easier for me to read your sentences if you help me see where they begin and end and this is part of capitalization's value. So at least for me your goal of putting ideas in my mind may be a little less effective
- probably_wrong 7mo agoIt's hard to take your argument of "removing capitalization has made my writing better" seriously when your comment history shows that you do capitalize your written text. But leaving that aside: Capitalization makes it easy for the reader to know where a concept ends and a new one begins. Without capitalization, your comment reads like a run-on sentence - a period in my display is 2px tall while a comma is 3.5px tall, the lack of capitalization makes my brain read them all as commas, and therefore your text is harder for me to parse. So I'd say yes, removing capitals did change the landing of your ideas for the worse.
- netsharc 7mo agoThat reminds me of an interaction I had with a foreign exchange intern at my uni. I was working in an organization that organized these exchanges and I was giving him the orientation on his first day, including introducing him to his employer. The employer wanted him to write an email to some other person in the company, and he 1st wrote it with no caps n txtspeak, and when he was done he went back through it so it would have proper sentences... It was flabbergasting..
- bluGill 7mo agoIf you want something to be clear you need to take time to re-read and revise it. If you really want to be sure there needs to be a full day between writing and revision (otherwise you will read what you meant to write, not what you actually wrote). For a presumably non-native speaker I expect he needed that extra effort. Technically I should wait a day to hey the reply button here. I don't see anything wrong with this post now, but it is a reasonable bet that there is something that someone else sees.
- officeplant 7mo ago>wait a day to hey the reply button here. Haha, yeah. I was face palming some obvious typos in an important email earlier. Even after reading it four times. I find this helps in writing music as well. I come back a day later and so many things stick out that my brain would just gloss over.
- lab14 7mo ago> It's hard to take your argument of "removing capitalization has made my writing better" seriously when your comment history shows that you do capitalize your written text. right, because i couldn't have adopted this writing style in the past few weeks. to address your second point, i could probably make better use of punctuation, but the original message is still delivered without all the fluff IMO.
- squigz 7mo agoIf you care about communicating an idea or concept effectively, things like capitalization and grammar are absolutely important.
- RiverCrochet 7mo agoWELL, THE CAPITAL LETTER FORMS WERE THE ORIGINAL ONES, THEN LOWERCASE ONES WERE CREATED BECAUSE THEY WERE FASTER FOR THE MONKS TO WRITE WHO WERE COPYING BOOKS. SOURCE: ROMAN RUINS. WE'RE NOT MONKS SO DEF COMPLETELY OBSOLETE. SO IF YOU WANT TO THROW OUT THE CAPITALIZATION RULES ENTIRELY, DO IT RIGHT AND USE ALL CAPS. THIS WOULD DEFINITELY MAKE IDEAS EASIER TO TRANSMIT AND RECEIVE.
- rkomorn 7mo agoI love how aggressive capitals feel to me no matter the intent or tone. This comment is just so much, all by virtue of caps lock.
- ismailmaj 7mo agoOh no, cortisol spike in my text-only forum.
- WhyNotHugo 7mo agoI read this as someone shouting, and cannot override the voice in my head to not-shout while reading it.
- ASalazarMX 7mo agoBeat me to this joke by a few minutes. Today seems like non-capitalization is the fad, but there was a time when all caps was the fad, at least in Spanish. It was mistakenly believed that capitals didn't need accents in Spanish, so illiterate people wrote all caps to avoid them. All lowercase feels the same.
- RandomLensman 7mo agoANDNOSPACESTHENPLEASE
- neonnoodle 7mo agoALSODONTFORGETTHEBOUSTROPHEDONSYSTEM ວИIᑫᑫAЯWYᗺວИITIЯWƎUИITИOƆUOYᗺƎЯƎHW LINESINREVERSE
- ASalazarMX 7mo agoTHIS IS WHY WE SHOULD GO BACK TO ALL CAPS SO WE HAVE LESS SYMBOLS TO WORRY AVOUT MAYBE GO BACK TO IGNORE DIACRITICS CUZ THEY ARE WIRD IT IS THE WAY OF OUR FOUNCERS
- lab14 7mo agototally missed the point, but you do you.
- ASalazarMX 7mo ago> _capitalization_ is one of those "arbitrary rules" If you're going to qualify capitalization as an arbitrary rule, then it wouldn't matter if it's all lowercase or all uppercase. It's not a whim of scholars, it improves readability, it emphasizes, it carries meaning. All uppercase looks loud today, but early computers were also all uppercase and it was normal. All lowercase looks bland and sloppy, only a few steps removed from "what u doing lol?" texting shorthand.
- davemp 7mo ago> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_... Ignorance of why something exists is not a good enough reason to destroy it.
- IshKebab 7mo agoYes... though I think Chesterton's fence definitely belongs in the "technically correct advice that actually does more harm than good" bucket, like "premature optimisation", "if it works don't fix it", the Unix philosophy and so on. This doesn't apply to capitalisation, but generally especially in computing if there's something that looks useless you should remove it. If it breaks the fault lies with whomever left something useless there without a note to explain it. The current project I'm working on has about 3 copies of every component because nobody bothers to clear up after themselves - dead code isn't doing any harm and it's better to leave it in case it's needed right? Well sure, if you want me to work about 3x slower than I otherwise could. Not an exaggeration.
- layer8 7mo ago> If it breaks the fault lies with whomever left something useless there without a note to explain it. The client won’t care, it’s your company who broke their system.
- casey2 7mo agoIt's not technically correct, it's blatant historicism. There has to be a physical cause for the fence. If whoever put up the fence decided that it wasn't important to list the cause then their fence was ill-conceived from the start. In some cases the fact that an object survived for so long might make it unique and worth study, but a million little (usually unenforced) regulations left around like so much garbage should be swept up.
- davemp 7mo ago> The current project I'm working on has about 3 copies of every component because nobody bothers to clear up after themselves In these cases you know the duplication and dead code is there because of sloppiness and Chesterton’s fence doesn’t apply.