3 ms·

I feel so old now. I always capitalize every IM or SMS I write and I try to make the punctuation as correct as possible. By that I mean that I don't stop at usi

I feel so old now. I always capitalize every IM or SMS I write and I try to make the punctuation as correct as possible. By that I mean that I don't stop at using the full stop as required, but also worry about commas, colons, semi-colons and even dashes. I'm also "guilty" of having read "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" by Lynne Truss and agreeing with it. It's not fair that being almost 35 I should feel so old, is it? ;-)

SheepSlapper 13y ago
I'm with you there, I'm pretty anal about keeping my texts as correct as possible. Proper grammar, capitalization, and spelling make messages so much easier to read and comprehend, so why wouldn't you take the extra few seconds to make sure they're correctly formatted? Especially these days, when your phone will auto-correct mistakes for you!
- chrismonsanto 13y ago
  I much prefer communicating without capital letters. I have a hand injury and I find any extra keystrokes to be annoying. For IRC or chat, it doesn't make sense to use capitalization or most punctuation. The beginning of the line serves as a delimiter between messages; capitalization is redundant in this capacity. Likewise, the end of the line serves a similar purpose, which makes periods (generally) redundant. The addition of a period in this medium adds extra emphasis to the message, which is often interpreted as aggressiveness (hence this article). Also, it is unfair to associate lack of capitalization with poor grammar and spelling. Poor grammar is associated with lack of education. Lack of capitalization should not be! You probably were not implying an association, but many others I have spoken to over the years have. (For some reason, I've had a lot of conversations about this stuff...)
  - SheepSlapper 13y ago
    Written communication is hard, and one of the keys to good written communication is leaving as little room for misunderstanding as possible. Using proper capitalization, spelling, and grammar are a few of the ways you can make your text more readable and less prone to misinterpretation. That being said, there are plenty of reason to eschew writing best practices, and you have to be pragmatic about it (for your own sanity, if nothing else). Have a hand injury? Skip the shift key once in a while if it saves you some pain. You're trading readability for speed/comfort/whatever, but depending on the situation that might be the better decision.
gizmo 13y ago
It's a mistake to think of "correct punctuation" as some sort of abstract goal to attain. Communication is about making yourself understood, and punctuation is a means to that end. When people expect a period to mean one thing because most people use a period in that fashion then what do you accomplish by defecting from that common usage? In meatspace you can rely on nonverbal cues, online you cannot. So if we can overload the semantics of a period and of capital letters to help compensate for the lack of nonverbal communication, all the better. Full sentences and proper grammar don't go away -- they just take on a different meaning. Clear communication is hard enough as is, why complicate matters further by limiting yourself to perfect sentences and lose out on the extra nuance?
- CodeMage 13y ago
  Funny, that's precisely why I'm trying to make my punctuation correct -- to compensate for the lack of nonverbal cues. I believe that by using "proper" punctuation -- and I'll explain my idea of "proper" shortly -- I can structure my sentences in such a way as to help the reader understand the nuances of what I intended to say, instead of having the reader try to guess it while parsing my sentences. Think of it as optimization hints for a compiler ;) Also, you'll notice that I don't hold fanatically to punctuation rules or rely on punctuation alone: for example, I use emoticons to try to convey my "tone" and if my sentence ends with an emoticon, I don't include the full stop. As for what I believe to be "correct punctuation", I guess my definition of "correct" stems from an increasingly outdated and somewhat romantic belief that people read books ;) My rationale is that the multitude of authors use punctuation more or less consistently, which trains readers to have a certain set of expectations. If my punctuation doesn't match their expectations, I'm more likely to provoke a miscommunication. So it all boils out to assumptions and expectations, which is why I said I feel old: mine are outdated ;)
- bmelton 13y ago
  > why complicate matters further by limiting yourself to perfect sentences and lose out on the extra nuance? My problem with that, and I'm sympathetic to both situations, but it seems as though the rules of proper grammar have been replaced with new rules that are less expressive than the old rules. Sure, if the community infers a period as hostile, then clearly, one attempting to avoid seeming hostile would be wise to avoid using periods. However, why is that the case? How did it get there in the first place? Yes, I know it's been this way for awhile, but the editor in my soul won't allow me to craft broken sentences, even where I know that they'll be more effective at communicating. Yes, I acknowledge that's a problem of mine, but I would argue that the bigger problem is that people are looking for more expressiveness by arbitrarily assigning connotation to things that otherwise bear none, while completely disregarding that there are ways to be more expressive through regular old English.
trentmb 13y ago
I'm 23 and missed when this change happened.

SheepSlapper 13y ago

I'm with you there, I'm pretty anal about keeping my texts as correct as possible. Proper grammar, capitalization, and spelling make messages so much easier to read and comprehend, so why wouldn't you take the extra few seconds to make sure they're correctly formatted? Especially these days, when your phone will auto-correct mistakes for you!

chrismonsanto 13y ago
I much prefer communicating without capital letters. I have a hand injury and I find any extra keystrokes to be annoying. For IRC or chat, it doesn't make sense to use capitalization or most punctuation. The beginning of the line serves as a delimiter between messages; capitalization is redundant in this capacity. Likewise, the end of the line serves a similar purpose, which makes periods (generally) redundant. The addition of a period in this medium adds extra emphasis to the message, which is often interpreted as aggressiveness (hence this article). Also, it is unfair to associate lack of capitalization with poor grammar and spelling. Poor grammar is associated with lack of education. Lack of capitalization should not be! You probably were not implying an association, but many others I have spoken to over the years have. (For some reason, I've had a lot of conversations about this stuff...)
- SheepSlapper 13y ago
  Written communication is hard, and one of the keys to good written communication is leaving as little room for misunderstanding as possible. Using proper capitalization, spelling, and grammar are a few of the ways you can make your text more readable and less prone to misinterpretation. That being said, there are plenty of reason to eschew writing best practices, and you have to be pragmatic about it (for your own sanity, if nothing else). Have a hand injury? Skip the shift key once in a while if it saves you some pain. You're trading readability for speed/comfort/whatever, but depending on the situation that might be the better decision.

gizmo 13y ago

It's a mistake to think of "correct punctuation" as some sort of abstract goal to attain. Communication is about making yourself understood, and punctuation is a means to that end. When people expect a period to mean one thing because most people use a period in that fashion then what do you accomplish by defecting from that common usage? In meatspace you can rely on nonverbal cues, online you cannot. So if we can overload the semantics of a period and of capital letters to help compensate for the lack of nonverbal communication, all the better. Full sentences and proper grammar don't go away -- they just take on a different meaning. Clear communication is hard enough as is, why complicate matters further by limiting yourself to perfect sentences and lose out on the extra nuance?

CodeMage 13y ago
Funny, that's precisely why I'm trying to make my punctuation correct -- to compensate for the lack of nonverbal cues. I believe that by using "proper" punctuation -- and I'll explain my idea of "proper" shortly -- I can structure my sentences in such a way as to help the reader understand the nuances of what I intended to say, instead of having the reader try to guess it while parsing my sentences. Think of it as optimization hints for a compiler ;) Also, you'll notice that I don't hold fanatically to punctuation rules or rely on punctuation alone: for example, I use emoticons to try to convey my "tone" and if my sentence ends with an emoticon, I don't include the full stop. As for what I believe to be "correct punctuation", I guess my definition of "correct" stems from an increasingly outdated and somewhat romantic belief that people read books ;) My rationale is that the multitude of authors use punctuation more or less consistently, which trains readers to have a certain set of expectations. If my punctuation doesn't match their expectations, I'm more likely to provoke a miscommunication. So it all boils out to assumptions and expectations, which is why I said I feel old: mine are outdated ;)
bmelton 13y ago
> why complicate matters further by limiting yourself to perfect sentences and lose out on the extra nuance? My problem with that, and I'm sympathetic to both situations, but it seems as though the rules of proper grammar have been replaced with new rules that are less expressive than the old rules. Sure, if the community infers a period as hostile, then clearly, one attempting to avoid seeming hostile would be wise to avoid using periods. However, why is that the case? How did it get there in the first place? Yes, I know it's been this way for awhile, but the editor in my soul won't allow me to craft broken sentences, even where I know that they'll be more effective at communicating. Yes, I acknowledge that's a problem of mine, but I would argue that the bigger problem is that people are looking for more expressiveness by arbitrarily assigning connotation to things that otherwise bear none, while completely disregarding that there are ways to be more expressive through regular old English.

trentmb 13y ago

I'm 23 and missed when this change happened.