I remember… a poster… who typed a lot of ellipses… in his text… for reasons that… escaped me…
The impression I was always left with was a person who has a slow sleepy voice that trailed off at random intervals or was frequently uncertain and hesitant about the very argument he was supposedly advancing. It literally tired me to read his work.
I don’t think homophones should Mary. 
For some reason, I tend to use a lot of em dashes for parentheticals. The reasons I do this—although it’s perfectly cromulent English—have been lost to the sands of time.
However, I Use Capital Letters and spel things gud, goddammit!
I have to give the guy credit, though. He’s taken what amounts to an intro to philosophy student’s weed-inspired question and turned it into an interesting discussion on consciousness… all without capital letters!
I completely agree with the OP. Sure, I might know what someone who can’t be bothered to spell or use the ‘shift’ key or capitalise things like “I” and proper nouns means, but I still place a lot less value on their thoughts and opinions than people who have spelt/capitalised/etc. properly.
And yes, I know, there’s lots of people out there with dyslexia or who are Shit At Spelling™ (or the related malady, Shit At Typing™) but the vast, vast majority of people who don’t follow conventional rules of spelling and grammar on the internet are, IMHO, just being lazy (or actively uninterested)- combined with not being able to spell properly.
He’s a regular e.e. skinner!
I concur. Using the shift key is really not all that burdensome, and if you’re too lazy to do that, I’m not inclined to give much weight to your Deep Thoughts.
Typing that way in IMs to your friends is fine, if your friends are okay with that. But personally, I consider typing that way in a place where one is generally expected to write like a grownup to be an act of passive aggression. “y’all ain’t the boss a’me! I do wut i want!!!1!”
Exactly. Obviously typing in IMs is going to be fast and informal, and so as long as your friends are OK with it then the “netspeak” isn’t an issue- I don’t think anyone expects you to type like Shakespeare* in that sort of situation. But in a “public” forum, you should at least try and spell/capitalise properly.
To do otherwise, IMHO, is the internet equivalent of hitching up your pants, taking the hayseed out of your mouth, hooking your thumbs under your suspenders, and saying (in a deep, redneck accent) “Ah maht not have a fancy North’n edumacation, but ahs got mahself an opinny-yon an’ y’all should lissin’ to 'it, y’hear?”**
BTW, am I the only one that has to read any sort of “Whatever! I do what I want!” type phrase in the voice of Eric Cartman? 
*Assuming he had a typewriter or keyboard or something, possibly invented by Da Vinci. Don’t get any ideas, Mr. Brown…
**For the humour impaired, I’m deliberately parodying a stereotype, not implying all people from the Southern US are dumb rednecks, M’kay? Jeff Foxworthy’s made an entire career out of this sort of thing, you know…)
No, not at all.
The more I see this post, the funnier I think it is.
I certainly hope not. I wrote it in the voice of Eric Cartman.
Excuse me while I sacrifice a cock to Gaudere.
I couldn’t agree with you more. Years ago, I told a new poster here that the only way we have to know you is by what you write and how you write it. In the real world, you may be a highly intelligent person who uses beautiful, perfectly correct grammar, but if you don’t capitalize or use proper punctuation here because it’s too much effort, why on earth should we make the effort to decipher what you write?
You misspelled ecspecially.
No space before an ellipsis.
This sentence doesn’t make grammatical sense. First off, it’s a fragment–although that would be acceptable if you were writing conversationally. But more impotantly, you’ve used a nonsense construction of “with [example] and [example] **to **[example].”
*Normal *is an adjective. Since you’re using it to modify a verb, you should have said normally, which is the adverbial form of the word.
You missed commas before the but and before the too.
This should be written as one word: anymore.
*They *would seem to refer to the teachers, not to the students.
Should be and continuing.
TL;DR version: Glass houses, neighbor. Glass houses.
Don’t bring his ED into this, he’s got enough problems.
he may not capitalize, but his post was much clearer than your mess of !!! and … and // and - and sentences that should have been in new paragraphs so that your message was clearer to the reader.
this is a message board, not a business letter or a college paper
people have written CONVERSATIONS here and i for one want to hear everyone’s IDEAS, so in my opinion, as long as the idea is clear, who fucking cares if they capitalize?
You’re right–that was cruel.
To a lot of us, proper punctuation and capitalization makes it easier to understand, and therefore more clear. So that’s both who and why we fucking care.
I Mary and Jane. Not there there’s anything wrong with that.
didn’t you mean “make it easier”, not “makes it easier”?
Yes. Thanks for pointing that out.