**c_goat ** If it doesn’t matter either way, why don’t we just say I’m am attractive. Makes me feel better.
** wring ** This seemed like the easiest way to solve the problem of everyone commenting about capitalization in my other posts, which were not intended to be about capitalization. It wasn’t directed at you. Others have commented. The status of your undies is still undetermined. I figured if very few responded to this topic, those that did interject comments about capitalization in my other threads might simply be overly zealous in their attention to "p"s and "q"s resulting in my considering their undies to be bunch-like.
You’re obviously an intelligent person, and it’s easier to read posts from someone who does, and I really enjoy reading your posts. q.e.d When you make proper use of the shift key, it’s easier for me to enjoy your posts ;-).
On the other hand if you have a strong personal preference against using your shift key on a regular basis, it’s not gonna stop me from enjoying your posts either.
Heh… I just have a weird sense of humor. I really wasn’t expecting a response to that part, just being silly. If it helps, your posts make me think of you as attractive.
I don’t even notice. Mostly since, a lack of appropriate capitalization does not make a post significantly more difficult for me to read.
In a much more formal medium, I probably would notice and wonder about a lack of capitalization. But here, I tend not to notice that particular questionable style choice, especially since there are so many others (“u” for “you” and similar abbreviations, using 1’s and 0’s for l’s and o’s, no punctuation, too much punctuation, lack of paragraph breaks) that drive me up the wall.
online english doesn’t map one to one with written english. it’s somewhere between written and conversational. depending on your background, you might lean one way or another. if you spent your first eight years online in chat rooms, you’re going to have a different posting style. education seems to have a lot to do with it- english majors like to complain about grammar, linguistics majors like to see what they can get away with and watch the interesting things people do with language online.
also, you can’t complain about poor written style in a thread and then fill your next post with {{{{{hugs}}}}} and :). they are ungrammatical. if you want everybody to capitalize as per strunk and white, they can’t use emoticons either. you can’t have it both ways.
not just to be contrary, but when i see someone complaining about grammar in a thread, i think “stop disrupting the conversation with your ad hominem nitpicking.” it’s meta-conversation, and most of time that type of thing messes up a good online chat or thread.
“proper” English usage usually indicates a person matching your nationality, social status and education level. just because someone is perceived as lacking in any of those doesn’t mean they don’t have something valuable to contribute to the thread. that stuff has little relation to intelligence, no matter how much you want it to signify that. the only person you’re hurting by only reading posts with pedigreed grammar is yourself. this board places high value on primary sources- well, they don’t all have english degrees. i’d like to hear from everyone, not just those who pass your arbitrary test of grammaticality. save the snap superficial judgement for job interviews where a complex social ritual has evolved around it.
also, i lost both of my pinky fingers in a bizarre piano accident so i can’t use the shift keys.
-fh
ps
hehehe, a little bit of flea market capitalization?
hazel may I point out, please, that not all of the objections about the lack of proper capitalization were from the grammar police?
And while you’re busy scolding others for being elitists about language, please also note that not everyone here is completely able bodied - so, unless you do indeed have the pinkies of your hands missing, that could be considered rude or insensative by some one who **was ** missing an appendage or two.
In addition. Some of us have vision problems as well. I have a tough enough time (with or without my glasses, with the browser window set at a higher text size) reading some posts, and as I pointed out (and at least one other agreed, IIRC) it makes it much more of a strain when people don’t capitalize or use all caps.
But, all that said, you of course, are free to do what you will. Keeping in mind, of course that the key here is communication with others.
Another huge fan of capitalizing, punctuation, etc. I don’t go into a wall-eyed hissy fit over it, but if something’s just plain too hard to read I tend to either skim it or skip it.
Writing is just putting thoughts into symbols. Caps, punctuation, spelling, etc. are just tools to get the thoughts across w/ minimal confusion. As long as the writer makes a reasonable effort to meet me, the reader, halfway I don’t get pissy about it. (There’s one poster who “as a mater of personal style” won’t use any capitals. We’ve finally bludgeoned him into punctuation, but it’s been tough. Sad thing is, he actually has some interesting things to say at times but just trying to read his stuff will rip your eyeballs out.)
A coupla observations: it always amazes me when standard writing protocols are dismissed as irrelevant in communicating by computer. Nothin’ pickier than code; play around w/ “style” beyond certain boundaries and it doesn’t work. Rather bizarre.
As far as the mechanics, I’m a fast but innacurate touch typist. Long fingers and somehow I always overshoot the shift key using my pinkies. So when I learned I automatically shift my thumbs under my palms to hit the shift key. Weird, but it works and I’m not always batting the Ctrl key by mistake.
You definitely have a point there, and I realize this. That’s why I actually ignore many ungrammatical practices when used online, and even engage in some myself. I’m definitely not an English major (I’m a hardcore tech-head), but I am one of those people whose eyes hurt when confronted with God-awful writing styles.
Sure you can! That’s exactly the sort of thing I was talking about above. Emoticons and certain other online-only practices are natural extensions of written English when used online. English is a living language, after all. But I find it much harder to accept that a lack of capitalization, piss-poor punctuation, improper spelling, and hate crimes against grammar are all natural extensions of written English when used online.
That’s exactly why I don’t jump in and start nitpicking. I might be sitting here in my chair gouging my eyes out of their sockets with a screwdriver, but I almost never jump on anyone about it. But racerx asked for our opinions, and if there’s one thing I’m full of, it’s opinions! (There’s another thing I’m full of, too, but that will become evident as you get to know me, if it hasn’t already.)
Oh, don’t even get me started on that! Heh… I know this all too well. I’m 100% white middle-class, and my girlfriend’s black. If you don’t think we’ve had more than one “discussion” along these lines… well… you’d be mistaken. Heh… Even though she grew up in a very white lifestyle, the cultural differences are still evident. What’s interesting is that she’s the blackest-speaking member of her family. Everyone else in her family speaks English like I do. Go figure.
I never said that. In fact, what I said was that lack of proper English usage may not indicate stupidity, but proper English usage almost always indicates intelligence. It’s like taking a home pregnancy test - if it turns blue, you can be pretty sure you’re definitely pregnant, but if it stays white, you can’t be entirely sure.
Whoa! Settle down there, Sparky! I never said I didn’t read some people’s posts because of their grammar. I wasn’t attacking anyone. I want to hear everyone’s opinions, too. I’m not trying to shut anyone out or shut anyone up. Like I said, racerx asked and I answered.
I’d be happy to design a foot-pedal shift key device for you, if you’d like.
Yeah, tell me about it… Last month I omitted a ! from some code I’d written for our company’s web site. The coders in the audience will probably realize that my little omission meant my code did the exact opposite of what I wanted it to do, which ended up costing our company several hundred dollars. Oops. Actually, the management took it rather well. They didn’t dock my pay or anything. Heh… There are definite advantages to working for a tight-knit 6-person corporation.
An isolated error or two doesn’t bother me. However, some posters impose the uncivilized burden on me and others of wading through continual mistakes in spelling and grammar that some non-native speakers of English on this board seem to be able to avoid. If posters do this, I’m really not interested in them.
It has been claimed that people with poor spelling, grammar, etc. still might have something worth listening to. You often hear news stories about some non-expert or poorly educated person who comes up with something which the experts have missed. Do you know why you hear those stories? A) People like those stories. B) They are news, i.e., these cases actually are quite rare. 1 time out of 1000 the non-expert is right. 999 times the expert is, but that isn’t news. Which one would you invest your time and/or money in?
i’m a non-shifter. for me it began in fourth grade when a teacher covered an essay with red ink, “inappropiate use of capitals.” after writing it about six times she then just subed the letters “iuoc” for the rest of the essay.
she was right, i did use capital letters inappropiatly (sp?). i had a hard time with left and right which transfered to “b’s” and “d’s”, “l’s” and “j’s”. i just couldn’t get which way they should go. we won’t discuss “p’s” and “q’s.” so my solution was to always write b’s and d’s in upper case, and l’s and j’s in lower case. she didn’t think this was a good solution. so i used a typewriter for all home assignments and only would use lower case. that gave her less stuff to redline and boosted my grade back to my usual b.
anything written in hand by me will have a bizarre mix of upper and lower case. usually if i email or use a word type software the checker will capitalize automatically . if it doesn’t i leave huge spaces between the end of one sentence before starting the next. unfortunatly it doesn’t seem to work here.
as far as punctuation goes… i use punctuation.
lower case is also a two letter name thing. if you have letters for a name you can only use lower case.
I have a strong preference for proper capitalization. If you don’t capitalize, I may not be able to read your longer posts. If you write a post that is just a sentence or two long, I can read it without any trouble, but if I have to wade through more than a couple of paragraphs all in lower case, my eyes will start to water. I may just scroll past, and only go back to your post if it is mentioned further down the thread by someone else, and I need to refer to it.
I don’t want to miss a good post, but I don’t want to strain my eyes, either. My eyes get tired a lot more quickly than they used to, and when I finally leave the computer, I need to make jewelry for a living.
Too much capitalization isn’t good either. I was new to message boards when I found the SDMB, and when I began posting here I WOULD EMPHASIZE MY POINTS BY WRITING IN CAPS.
No one ever called me on it, but I later learned that it is considered rude to SHOUT.:o
The more care you put into your posts, the more people will want to read them.
emoticons are to me an attempt to express non-verbal components of conversation in writing, and are not extensions of written but spoken english. same goes for the laxness in capitalization, punctuation and spelling -people are much more forgiving of “grammatical” errors in spoken language (often to the point of not even noticing them consciously), and i would argue online conversation like chat is more of a spoken than written style, even though it’s “written.” so strict grammar is misplaced- people rarely speak that way. that’s why i mentioned chat in my original comment. i get used to expressing myself online in a spoken style, and only on very formal occasions will i put on my business letter hat. this message board to me is more social than formal. so comments on my grammar are perceived as though you were in a strange way making fun of the way i talked. polite people don’t do that.
your peers are generally more of an influence on your speech than your parents. does that explain anything? that’s why my friend’s daughters have english accents even though their parents are american. they grew up in england.
proper usage in formal written english indicates you had extensive traning in how to adhere to an arbitrary style, or the services of an expert editor. i have encountered many fastidious writers whose ideas were confused, boring, illogical… you get the idea. lacking intelligence. if proper usage in formal written english always indicated intelligence, i would have to buy even more books than i already do, and that is an unthinkable situation.
your intelligence test is dangerously unreliable. it’s a social test.
yeah, i guess i had some wind in my sails back there.
that wouldn’t work either. my computer is pedal-powered, and if i stop pedaling, the screen goes dark.
My first impression of any unpunctuated writing (include uncapitalized posts in that set) is that the author was writing for their benefit and had no consideration for their audience. They didn’t want to communicate; they just wanted to talk. Something worth saying is worth saying well. To give an example, my department hired an engineer a while back. She is a good engineer and hard worker, but she quickly alienated several engineers and department heads by writing every daily communication as if she was posting to a chat room (FWIW, some of the replies were hilarious.)
Ironically, people say the same thing about clothes that I’m saying about writing, and I’m a caual dresser at best. There may be a comparison there: writing styles may loosen in time as dress styles have over the past few decades, but it’s my opinion that, in the meantime at least, you need to use every tool at your disposal if you want to communicate effectively.
Speaking only for myself, and without intending offense, that was hard to read, hazel-rah. Oh, I could do it but I had to slow down and take it almost word-by-word to get your meaning.
I thoroughly agree that the exchanges here are pretty informal. But it isn’t chat, and speed isn’t of the essence. Some people are pickier than others about the grammar thing, but in practice just about anything goes if the meaning is clear. It falls somewhere between live conversation/chat and formal writing.
Please take this in the spirit intended, but the only thing we have to go by is what people write–and how. If something is too hard to read I figure the writer just plain didn’t care very much about the reader. It’s a two-way street.
All capitalization does is give the reader an immediate visual signal. That’s it. At the beginning of sentences it says, “starting new thought here”. For proper nouns it says, “not a regular word; talkin’ about a specific person, place, title, whatever”.
That still leaves a lot of room for individual style. But more often than not when I see blocks of lower-case prose streaming along I tend to decide it isn’t worth the effort. Could be the greatest thoughts in the world but the writer isn’t meeting me halfway.
Please don’t take this as a personal slam; it surely isn’t intended that way. Some of the funniest, truest things I’ve read here have been zinged out in ::koff:: less-then-elegant form. No reflection on intelligence; strictly a matter of readability.
ok, we’re friends again, but you still can’t see my undies…