i was just wondering this afternoon what you the members of the esteemed straight dope message board or dopers if you will would think of a person ie yours truly who was in the common yet in some quarters highly disparaged habit of writing lengthy paragraphs or other sections of text what appear as you see it now in other words sentences that go on and on with little or no distinguishing punctuation and an unfortunate tendency toward run on sentences.
THE REASON I AM ASKING IS TO DETERMINE IF MY POSTING STYLE MAY BE DUE FOR A CHANGE THAT IS TO SWITCH FROM ALL LOWER CASE TO ALL CAPS. I UNDERSTAND THAT SOME MEMBERS OF THIS ESTEEMED COMMUNITY MAY FIND THIS POSTING STYLE ANNOYING AS WELL BUT IF IT WERE A MATTER OF CHOICE AND YOU HAD TO CHOOSE BETWEEN ONE OR THE OTHER WITH NO EXCEPTIONS THEN WHICH STYLE WOULD YOU FIND MORE ANNOYING. THE MATTER HANGS IN THE BALANCE SO CHOOSE CAREFULLY.
I’m fond of capitals and punctuation, but having little kids in my life again has triggered again that curious syndrome by which if you yell at me, I can’t understand what you say. Please use your indoors voice, thanks.
I cannot read capitals without using an internal yelling voice. The disconcerting thing is that it’s my voice, and I’m not the one yelling.
So yeah, Koxinga, knock it off. I love the sound of my own voice, but not when it’s screaming at me in some bizarre one-sided communication two-way mirror. It makes my brain throat sore.
Agreed. I’d skip right over it and completely ignore your post. Same goes for raNdoM caPs, complete lack of punctuation, and huge blocks of unbroken text. I will also admit to having an anti-smilie prejudice, because it’s hard for me to take a post seriously when there’s a smilie at the end of every line. Use them sparingly, please.
i tend to post in lower case on the dope or in instant messaging only because i’m lazy about capping sentences properly. what i do do is break up the sentences so they are easy to read.
iirc my schoolgirl days, you aren’t supposed to string more than three sentences together anyway - especially if you change subjects within that parapgraph. too hard to read.
What level of mean schoolmarm are we talking about, here? Hands on hips, glaring down above reading glasses? Finger-wagging? Brandishing a knuckle-rapping ruler at repeat offenders?
There are people who would pay for you to play mean schoolmarm you know … they’ve been such naughty students!
ALL CAPS is well nigh unreadable.
all lowercase without punctuation is quite annoying but can be read still it identifies the post as probably not worth the bother so i probably would just skip it most times afterall if the poster cant be bothered to take the time to use a cap key or to type a period or comma mark then they probably havent taken the time to think much either and i probably shouldnt take the time to suffer through their ill thought wall of text even though i could if for some reason i thought it might be worth it whereas suffering through more than a few words of all caps i coudnt handle at all like who is even bothering to still read this
I, also, “hear” all caps text as yelling in my head. Gives me a headache. Also removes normal cadence from the text. So I vote that all caps is more annoying. However, I’m likely to skip reading either.
The first page shown under “Find all posts by Koxinga” doesn’t show her (him?) using either of these styles, so I wonder who will be advised by this poll.
The question is rather like being asked if I’d rather be kicked in the privates or whacked on the head with a baseball bat. Not much of a choice. Why strike me at all?
I have a good friend who emails in all caps, but I forgive him because I know that he is an avid ham radio enthuiast and the all-caps thingy is just what they are brought up to do.
Dude, no. Don’t you go mishmashing using all lower case letters and sentences devoid of punctuation. I don’t even notice lack of capitalization half the time, but lack of punctuation can be borderline unreadable.
