Hi SD,
Why have we as humans never considered capitalization as a form of respect? Or, more accurately, refusal to capitalize as a form of disrespect?
I am not saying this is an awesome idea, just that it seems like an easy way to convey negative feelings about someone…saying this person is so worthless, they are not even deserving of elevation into proper noun status.
Names are always afforded capital letters to distinguish themselves from other words. The addition of the capital letter acknowledges the humanity of the subject. It’s like a little genuflection toward the person. It also requires more work than normal. Donald Trump requires more effort than donald trump. The use of the “shift key” though minimal is an extra effort that is not strictly necessary.
I simply feel that it sounds like something people would have gravitated towards as a way of directly expressing disdain (something we all love to do is hate others). So why not write your disrespect by omitting capital letters for people who don’t deserve even that much? (I’m thinking “adolf hitler”)
I am posting this even knowing it is a stupid question. But it has been bugging me. Maybe there is a practical reason why people don’t do this. Or maybe more like, why there haven’t been instances of it?
Why did e.e. cummings refuse to capitalize her name? What point was she trying to make? Maybe these two things are related.
If you dig through the elections forum here, you’ll find plenty of folks who did, in fact, decapitalize Trump’s name (or, in some cases, even reverse-cased it as “tRUMP”).
And for what it’s worth, e e cummings was male. Might you be getting him mixed up with k.d. lang?
Cummings was a man. And he wrote his own name with capital letters. His publishers used lower case as a style decision in his books to match his all lower case poetry. It was not meant as a guide for how his name was meant to be written in ordinary text.
That E. E. Cummings refused to use capitals in either his name or his poetry is a myth.
But he often did use the lower case. He was part of the modernist movement, which strove to shatter the extremely fussy and often meaningless rules of language use at the time. He wanted people to think about words and meaning, to realize that the mere placement of words on a page could sometimes be its own reward. Sentences did not have to start with a capital and end with a period. Poetry could free our thinking and our selves.
That names must be capitalized is part of that fussy rigidity that can eventually backfire. You’ve only been here on the Dope two years. At one time it was considered good form to bold a username whenever you referred to it. Not doing so was considered rude. Why? I have no idea. It started before I joined. It eventually went out of fashion. Because it was a meaningless rule.
Capitalization itself is like that. At one time proper English required that every noun be capitalized, as they still are in German. Look at an original copy of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. Over time, people got lazy and started lower-casing nouns, except for proper nouns and at beginnings of sentences. I’m sure some people at the time thought this showed no respect or sheer ignorance. They lost that battle.
The use of text and mobile devices that made capitalizing a difficult additional step is changing the norms again. Some will last, some will not.
You’re yelling at the tide not to come in, and not to go out either. Try to figure out why you’re doing so. That you’re used to it is a good answer for your own writing but not a reason to judge others. Not that everybody doesn’t judge others for any reason or none at all. It’s usually not a good idea to tell the world you’re doing so.
Sorry, I didn’t realize e e cummings was a man. Thanks for correcting me.
I don’t think I am advocating for this change, nor do I think it’s necessarily a good idea. I was just wondering why it never caught on. Your explanation helps.
In 2014, simulltaneously, the New York Mets had three playes on their 25-man roster whose surnames started with a lower-case D – d’Arnaud, deGrom and den Dekker.
Their names, apparently, do not “legally” start with lower-case, since their identity documents (passport, drivers license, etc.) have their names printed in all caps, and such documents ae not case-sensitive… But their ancestors came from languages in which prepositions appended so surnames are not capitalized, and in America, they continue to follow their family’s tradition.
Which raises an interesting question: Is a legal name a verbal utterance, or a written symbol? Can you pronounce your name any way you like, as long as it is spelled right, or can you spell it any way you like as long as it is pronounced right?
So far as I know, Exapno, it’s still the convention here to bold usernames. But I don’t think that not doing so is regarded as rude. I think the primary purpose is just to make names stand out a little more, so that it’s easier for people reading a thread to see when they’re being mentioned.
The law is not so finicky about spelling, pronunciation, or capitalization. All that matters is that it is understood who is identified, and so long as there is no intent to defraud.
No, it doesn’t. Capitalization indicates proper nouns, whether or not they’re human. We capitalize names of people, places, things… titles of books, movies, songs… etc. etc. It has nothing to do with respect. (And, as Exapno noted, it used to be the case in English, and still is in German, that all nouns are capitalized by convention.)
Every once in a while I’ll see someone refuse to capitalize “god” or “the bible” in a discussion here. I’m never quite sure what their point is, but I think it looks ignorant and/or petty.
It all depends. I technically have three names that can all be considered legal versions of my name; what’s on my passport and birth certificate is one version, what’s on my baptismal certificate, and what’s on all my provincial identification and credit cards and such is a third.
I could use my baptismal certificate to alter the other if I wanted. Can’t be bothered, though.
I’m not sure how refusing to follow proper grammar and punctuation is a sign of respect or disrespect. If you are trying to convey an opinion about someone or something, use your big boy words to articulate the thoughts you are trying to convey.
Wait, are you telling us that these new posters that show up here and never use the shift key or many other punctuations are just being disrespectful. And all along, I just thought they were ignorant.
The OP has a point that *some *uses of initial capitals is to connote respect, or at least the significance of something. The President of the United States is a bigger wheel than the president of my condo association. Which fact you can readily identify by the bigger P.
All of which is historical in origin and may be on the wane today as said above.
A consequence of the internet in all its myriad forms from texting to twitter to SDMB to blogs to … is that far more ordinary people now engage in writing and in reading the writing of other ordinary people than was ever done in all of human history.
Spoken language has been the province of Everyman since time immemorial. Written language has been (mostly) the province of the educated elite since its fairly recent invention. As Inspector Clouseau might say: “Not anymore.” Everyman is taking possession of written language at historically unprecedented speed.
In 300 years linguists will be talking about this or that Great Shift which happened in the 21st Century just as they now talk about the Great Vowel Shift of the 1400s-1600s.