Comment by 4ggr0

Comment by 4ggr0 2 days ago

7 replies

i don't want to press the shift-key everytime i need a capitalized letter on my phone and i disable auto-correct because it constantly messes with native languages etc.

wasn't aware that this makes me a steve jobs copier :(

EDIT: people are seriously so emotionally invested in capitalization that i get downvoted into minus, jeez.

marssaxman 2 days ago

When you consciously choose to save yourself effort in writing, at the expense of the readers who are trying to make sense of what you are saying, the people onto whom you've transferred the cognitive load are not likely to appreciate your laziness.

  • 4ggr0 19 hours ago

    your comment contains one, single, capitalized letter. if the first W in your comment would have been small, would that have made your comment so much harder to read?

    does it make my comment so hard to read just because i don't start my sentences with big letters and don't capitalize myself(i)? really don't get the fuzz.

    of course i capitalize letters in "official" texts, but we're in a comment section.

    i find it doubly funny because english doesn't capitalize lots of things, anyways.

1dom 14 hours ago

Hey, sorry! I don't want you to feel bad, and I don't think you should.

I think there are legitimate reasons to struggle with things like capital letters, and you've named a few: non-native language and interface device limitations. There's other accessibility reasons too, like I have some dyslexic family members who use less capitalisation than most. Also, direct or casual communication with individuals, the impact of the extra cognitive load is minimal - 1 or 2 people - so again, no real issue.

The problem I have with this piece is that it's clearly meant to be an intellectual or academic-adjacent piece, and it's clearly meant to be public/read by many people - that's why we're reading it on Hackernews. The author is not putting in the extra few seconds required to fix the problem when writing, and as a result, many thousands of people lose a few seconds each when reading. I feel there must be a point where the cost of the extra reading time to humanity outweighs the benefits of the intellectual contribution - I can't really tell because even if I overlook the capitalisation, I'm not smart enough to understand it anyway.

tomsmeding a day ago

For completeness: I also disable all autocorrect/autocomplete on mobile because it's more trouble than it's worth, but I leave auto-capitalisation on. This is a thing, they're independent settings.

  • 4ggr0 18 hours ago

    i absolutely HATE every automated keyboard-"helper", ever.

    type in multiple languages constantly and all of these helpers constantly default to english usage. plus it would be weird to me if every sentence starts with a capital letter but the rest is left as it is. seems like such an arbitrary solution.

bowsamic 2 days ago

> EDIT: people are seriously so emotionally invested in capitalization that i get downvoted into minus, jeez.

I find it weird that you would be surprised that people care about the quality of textual communication

  • 4ggr0 19 hours ago

    maybe because i use downvotes differently than others. downvote for me means, that someone either outright lies, is very disrespectful or adds nothing to the discussion.

    i don't see it as a "i don't agree with this comment"-button. opinions differ, i guess :)