Mastodawn

You know something? When reading braille, I notice things about people's writing styles that I never would notice with JAWS and I'm not trying to be an asshole, but I've notice the lack of capitalization in writing these days. Is that just not a thing in modern English education? #Writing

Gnome Kat Dec 4

its internet culture.. I am not exactly sure why we do it. I see younger online ppl do it more.. queer people.. its some kind of cultural signifier I think.

I remember when I started my last job the team all sent me emails welcoming me and the other trans girl on the team sent me theirs with no caps.. and idk it just made me feel like it was a place I could fit in.

its absolutely not an educational thing. the kind of ppl I see doing it often are some of the smartest people I know.

Nicks World Dec 4

@gnomekat I see. I can understand that though I still see it as improper, but that's me. If its just an internet culture thing, its alright. IDK, as an immigrant and later in life, I was always taught to speak and write properly and its never left me, so I never did anything differently.

Gnome Kat Dec 4

@NicksWorld learn the rules well so you can know when to break them :)

writing proper is good for conveying information.. but going beyond that is when it becomes art

its like when people criticize afro-english as improper as if black Americans cant speak like white people. when in reality they can and do every day to survive but they choose not to when they don't have to

Nicks World Dec 4

@gnomekat I'm not trying to be critical. I was just curious about the change. Maybe its been a thing for years and only now am I starting to notice it.

german ohio nationalist/separatist Dec 4

@gnomekat @NicksWorld capitalisation feels weirdly formal while nocaps is just "i am typing this as quickly as i can"

also it lets me sidestep my annoyance with english capitalisation rules, coming from german (proper nouns are an incredibly nebulous, subjective and context-dependent concept. e.g. some people refer to any fancy lighter as a zippo. does that mean i can not capitalise it if im not specifically referring to a zippo brand zippo? thats fucking silly who thought of this. either im capitalising all nouns or im capitalising none of them and ive made my choice

also i is a pronoun it should NOT be capitalised. thats stupid too who thought of this crap. also in handwriting i use cursive and that lets me write entire words in one go with every letter leading into the next and capital letters would interrupt that. i should really learn shorthand though)

Nicks World Dec 4

@coolbean @gnomekat I also notice, and its not just from you but I see a lack of aposterphy. I'm guessing its for the same reasons? I rarely write shorthand.

german ohio nationalist/separatist Dec 4

@NicksWorld @gnomekat i generally try to use apostrophes (but tend to forget mainly in contractions) so yea, not sure

im honestly not sure why that one happens. i want to blame smartphone keyboards where you have to press and hold comma to access them but honestly modern autocorrect/predictive text should correct for that so i'm honestly unsure why this is still a thing apart from... forgetting

i at least try to consistently use it when dealing with possessives since if one ends in s (say because its plural, a car's many cars') the spot of the apostrophe changes meaning it has some semantic meaning

this post has made me very self conscious about forgetting the apostrophe in "i'm" but at this point its too late. im counting 4 occurences in this post alone and i doubt i spotted them all

german ohio nationalist/separatist Dec 4

@NicksWorld @gnomekat admittedly, i turned off all autocorrect and predictive text years ago, back when it was still bad and continue to refuse to use it. it might just be people in the same position

Nicks World Dec 4

@coolbean @gnomekat That's fair. No judgements here. As long as I understand what you are saying, that's good enough for me.

german ohio nationalist/separatist Dec 4

@NicksWorld @gnomekat i mean who can deny that many of our common contractions have essentially become their own words with their own grammar rules by now making the apostrophe somewhat redundant

"why don't you get me a cup of tea" is perfectly normal whereas "why do not you get me a cup of tea" makes me sound like fucking gollum

Gnome Kat Dec 4

@coolbean @NicksWorld

damn I never noticed that shit with don't I'm never gana look at don't the same way again..

Nicks World Dec 4

@coolbean @gnomekat I don't think its redundant but I'm old school.

Lynn I 🗽Dec 4

@NicksWorld Braille shows me many things I would not otherwise easily realize. I feel the quality of education in the US has been going down the tubes for a lot of years now. When I read books by British authors, for example, or even US authors that wrote decades ago, the difference is stark. I just read a book by William Faulkner, and the writing is fabulous, but he passed away in the early 1960s.

Nicks World Dec 4

@Lynn I guess things change, but we all do what we can with what we have and there are great modern authors.

Lynn I 🗽Dec 4

@NicksWorld Indeed there are. I was speaking in general, and there are almost always exceptions. Another example of this is when you read transcripts of BBC podcasts versus US produced news podcasts. I really see a significant difference there too.

Nicks World Dec 4

@Lynn Well, the Brits invented English so it only makes sense why things are different.

Lynn I 🗽Dec 4

@NicksWorld I'm really not talking about usage or presentation. What I'm trying to get at is the ofen noticable lack of wordsnithing by US authors.

Erica Cole Dec 4

@NicksWorld I notice it too. However I have let myself go a bit slack with making sure to use caps in an effort to get what I'm saying out into the world without using too much hand brain co-ordination energy.

Nicks World Dec 4

@ladymunch I'm guessing this is common. I'm starting to see a theme.