Comment by latexr

Comment by latexr 10 months ago

1 reply

> lowercase without caps reads with a warmer, informal tone

Personally, and I’m certain I’m not alone on this, it reads as annoying. It’s harder to follow and looks as if the writer didn’t care to do the bare minimum to make the text accessible and clear to the reader.

> there’s a Tom Scott Language Files video documenting it

Per that video (thank you for sharing), capital letters “make a paragraph easier to read” and “context matters” and “the conventions change fairly quickly” and typing in all lowercase is “sometimes okay”.

This is a post documenting a serious browser vulnerability, shared to the wide internet, not an informal conversation between buddies. Clarity matters. I don’t fully buy the tone argument and find words and sentence structure are more important. Take the following two examples:

> Just heard about your promotion, you beautiful bastard! Let’s go get pissed to celebrate, on me!

And:

> good afternoon mrs bartlet. the limousine will be available in twenty minutes. i would also like to apologise for my behaviour yesterday when i inadvertently insulted your husband it was a faux pas i promise will not be repeated. my resignation will be on your desk by noon.

I get that language evolves. You do you. Personally I hope this trend subsides like so many others before it. Maybe you don’t like to read properly structured text and prefer all lowercase. My preference is the reverse. And that’s OK, we don’t all have to be the same. I merely wish that people who prefer a certain style understand not everyone will see it the same way they do (and I’m including myself).

Wingy 10 months ago

That's true. I agree with you that anything less than a formal tone would be, and is, inappropriate for this context. I also respect that you prefer standard capitalization and punctuation at all times. Being aware of the audience is critical for any writer.