Lest filtering effects keep this from getting reported: I didn’t read this post. It had a promising title, but the competition for things to read is intense, and I consider no-caps a negative quality signal.
i model it as being really easy for most people to learn to read lowercase things which have sufficient paragraph breaks but if this is not the case i would stop doing that in mediums when people arent used to it
There is absolutely no good reason why your readers should have to learn to read a whole new idiosyncratic typographic style just to read your writing.
What I hear, when I see people say things like this, is “I really don’t care about my readers’ time, or cognitive effort, etc.; I am not willing to take the minimal effort to use basic, standard typographic practices, so that people don’t have to exert extra, unnecessary effort just to read what I’m writing (never mind understand it)”. Fair enough. The natural response, however, is “Then I guess I don’t care about what you’re writing, then”.
“No good reason” strikes me as a bit strong/strawmannish, but I agree with the general sentiment.
It definitely created a bit of a sense that you don’t care about my reading experience, though aesthetic styles and acquired tastes are a thing, and I can imagine coming to like someone’s writing more in the long-term because of their idiosyncratic writing style.
Well, it’s an interesting question: what are some good reasons?
Perhaps someone is writing avant-garde poetry, and might wish to use all-lowercase as a sort of artistic statement? But it seems to me like Less Wrong isn’t the place for that; and, in any case, we’d then judge the work as poetry. Most poets used proper capitalization, in any case…
Yeah, I think the poetic direction is getting at some of the things I was pointing at above. Distinctness is hard to come by on the internet, especially if you don’t have control over the complete typography, and you might be able to create your own brand within a subculture by “being the guy who only uses lowercase”. If you succeed, then that seems good and might even be for everyone’s benefit. But since distinctness is sparse, people will rationally be averse to giving up that brand-space to just the first person who comes around, and will generally be much more critical of someone who claims that level of importance in their first post.
I agree that this is a reason people might do this.
I think it is an unusually bad reason; and I think it’s especially important that we punish such behavior when it’s done for this sort of reason, even more so than when it’s done because of laziness or ignorance or anything else.
Someone who tries to “create their own brand” by intentionally sabotaging their readers’ reading experience, is burning the commons by undermining the norm that everyone should strive to make their writing as readable as possible (in the typographic / orthographic / etc. sense, not necessarily in the sense of “dumbing down” the content).
And since, as you point out, there is incentive to do this (distinctness is hard to come by—and, I will add, it’s much easier to be distinct by breaking rules of good typography, than to be distinct by… producing distinct ideas / etc.)… that means that unless we punish this sort of thing, it’ll be rampant.
If you succeed [at creating your own brand in this way], then that seems good and might even be for everyone’s benefit.
This is possible, but a) it’s quite unlikely (most people’s writing is not nearly good enough to be worth it), and b) the cost [from people burning the commons in this way if such “distinctness” isn’t punished harshly] is far, far greater than any expected gains.
i think it’s positive sum to exist-in-a-state which supports people using more explorative grammatical styles, because language is pretty constraining for expression for a lot of people and pushing them to optimize their language use helps a lot
this has the downside that poeple need to be capable of parsing different grammatical styles, but as far as i can tell on platforms where this is widespread literally everyone manages to do this because it’s much easier than parsing different writing styles (which is necessary for anything involving a large number of people writing things)
if i put two spaces after the ends of sentences would that help you, oliver? like this. to make sentences more clearly delineated. (edit: i think they get removed automatically, is there a way i can make that not happen)
i think it’s positive sum to exist-in-a-state which supports people using more explorative grammatical styles, because language is pretty constraining for expression for a lot of people and pushing them to optimize their language use helps a lot
I agree with this, and personnally I didn’t even notice the lack of capital letters until it was pointed out. I also agree that sometimes it makes sense to place hoops in front of people to make sure you have their attention.
I do not, however, think that this is one of those times.
To the extent that people care, it’s a battle that is going to have to be fought somewhere before people accept your way of writing, and I think you should reconsider where/how/if you want to fight this battle. I’d do it differently.
Sorry for the spaces thing. It’s a thing that our editor framework does that isn’t super trivial to deactivate (curtesy of Facebook which maintains draft.js). I hope to get around to changing that behavior at some point.
wRiTiNg wItH aLtErNaTiNg lOwErCaSe aNd cApItAlS lIkE tHiS.
.siht ekil sdrawkcab gnitirw
wreteng whiri thi littirs “i” and “e” ari entirchangid leki thes.
ALL CAPS WRITING LIKE YOU GET SOMETIMES IN LEGALESE.
Although these are all fairly easy to read, especially in small quantities, and they are all things one can probably learn to read even more easily, they are all harder work and less pleasant to read than text written in the usual way, with normal spelling and punctuation and capitalization. Especially when they come in larger quantities. And I strongly agree with Said Achmiz that the main effects of using a substantially nonstandard style are (1) to make your readers’ lives a little bit less pleasant and (2) to send the message “I don’t care about your time or effort or pain” to your readers.
Now, of course, you may want to do those things. You may just enjoy making people suffer (this one’s fairly unlikely). You may be making a sort of status move (see, I am so much more important than you that I can inflict this cost on you and you’ll put up with it). You may be trying to select for readers who really want to read what you write. You may be trying to select for readers who are already used to the style you’re using (maybe it’s a subculture thing). You may be trying to select for readers whose brain hardware happens to make reading your different style of text particularly easy (maybe they’re cleverer). Etc.
But you should think hard about whether the selection effect you’re actually getting is the one you want. I think it probably isn’t.
I for one, would be all for a swap over to a no caps English, but my desire to not cause such a ruckuss as this over trivial aesthetic things out weighs it. If you think of all the extra effort/time you waste breaking your typing flow by having to capitilise letters at the beginning of sentences. Isn’t that what the period is supposed to before, to denote the end of a sentence and the start of a new. I do think capitals should be used for emphasis though, and for proper nouns if they intentionally choose to have a capital letter. Such as LaTeX.
I downvoted each contributor once. I don’t think the discussion is instrinsically bad and think there’s something worth discussing, but it’s not the topic of the post itself and not what I want it people to see by default. (interpret my downvote as “if you want to have this discussion [i.e. opinionated meta discussion about proper etiquette], you pay a tax to have the discussion”). I’d rather the conversation continue on Meta if people think it’s important.
(I also downvoted myself since I’m adding to the problem)
I agree with Raemon. I want to read about lex’s idea of target stress, not about lex’s use of capital letters, and I have no idea how to obtain this goal except, perhaps, writing a defense of not using capital letters and hoping the derailment works backwards.
Why no capital letters?
a e s t h e t i c
capital letters to denote sentence-start seem less useful to me than capital letters to denote a certain type of emphasis
also, it is a matter of principle that i should… check that people are paying enough attention to be willing to interact with atypical grammar
jeremybentham’sstolen head, whoever you are, i love you too
Lest filtering effects keep this from getting reported: I didn’t read this post. It had a promising title, but the competition for things to read is intense, and I consider no-caps a negative quality signal.
Sure, seems fine. I think it made reading the post a bunch harder to read for me, but mileage might vary.
hm
i model it as being really easy for most people to learn to read lowercase things which have sufficient paragraph breaks but if this is not the case i would stop doing that in mediums when people arent used to it
There is absolutely no good reason why your readers should have to learn to read a whole new idiosyncratic typographic style just to read your writing.
What I hear, when I see people say things like this, is “I really don’t care about my readers’ time, or cognitive effort, etc.; I am not willing to take the minimal effort to use basic, standard typographic practices, so that people don’t have to exert extra, unnecessary effort just to read what I’m writing (never mind understand it)”. Fair enough. The natural response, however, is “Then I guess I don’t care about what you’re writing, then”.
Edit: clarification
“No good reason” strikes me as a bit strong/strawmannish, but I agree with the general sentiment.
It definitely created a bit of a sense that you don’t care about my reading experience, though aesthetic styles and acquired tastes are a thing, and I can imagine coming to like someone’s writing more in the long-term because of their idiosyncratic writing style.
Well, it’s an interesting question: what are some good reasons?
Perhaps someone is writing avant-garde poetry, and might wish to use all-lowercase as a sort of artistic statement? But it seems to me like Less Wrong isn’t the place for that; and, in any case, we’d then judge the work as poetry. Most poets used proper capitalization, in any case…
But other than that…?
Yeah, I think the poetic direction is getting at some of the things I was pointing at above. Distinctness is hard to come by on the internet, especially if you don’t have control over the complete typography, and you might be able to create your own brand within a subculture by “being the guy who only uses lowercase”. If you succeed, then that seems good and might even be for everyone’s benefit. But since distinctness is sparse, people will rationally be averse to giving up that brand-space to just the first person who comes around, and will generally be much more critical of someone who claims that level of importance in their first post.
I agree that this is a reason people might do this.
I think it is an unusually bad reason; and I think it’s especially important that we punish such behavior when it’s done for this sort of reason, even more so than when it’s done because of laziness or ignorance or anything else.
Someone who tries to “create their own brand” by intentionally sabotaging their readers’ reading experience, is burning the commons by undermining the norm that everyone should strive to make their writing as readable as possible (in the typographic / orthographic / etc. sense, not necessarily in the sense of “dumbing down” the content).
And since, as you point out, there is incentive to do this (distinctness is hard to come by—and, I will add, it’s much easier to be distinct by breaking rules of good typography, than to be distinct by… producing distinct ideas / etc.)… that means that unless we punish this sort of thing, it’ll be rampant.
This is possible, but a) it’s quite unlikely (most people’s writing is not nearly good enough to be worth it), and b) the cost [from people burning the commons in this way if such “distinctness” isn’t punished harshly] is far, far greater than any expected gains.
i think it’s positive sum to exist-in-a-state which supports people using more explorative grammatical styles, because language is pretty constraining for expression for a lot of people and pushing them to optimize their language use helps a lot
this has the downside that poeple need to be capable of parsing different grammatical styles, but as far as i can tell on platforms where this is widespread literally everyone manages to do this because it’s much easier than parsing different writing styles (which is necessary for anything involving a large number of people writing things)
if i put two spaces after the ends of sentences would that help you, oliver? like this. to make sentences more clearly delineated. (edit: i think they get removed automatically, is there a way i can make that not happen)
I agree with this, and personnally I didn’t even notice the lack of capital letters until it was pointed out. I also agree that sometimes it makes sense to place hoops in front of people to make sure you have their attention.
I do not, however, think that this is one of those times.
To the extent that people care, it’s a battle that is going to have to be fought somewhere before people accept your way of writing, and I think you should reconsider where/how/if you want to fight this battle. I’d do it differently.
Syntax, not grammar
Sorry for the spaces thing. It’s a thing that our editor framework does that isn’t super trivial to deactivate (curtesy of Facebook which maintains draft.js). I hope to get around to changing that behavior at some point.
This bothers me too. I would like double spaces. In comments too please.
Here are some other things it would be really easy for most people to learn to read:
wri ting whe re ea ch wo rd i s spl it i n tw o li ke th is.
wriFUCKthing whFUCKere eacFUCKh worFUCKd iFUCKs interFUCKrupted bFUCKy profFUCKanity liFUCKke thiFUCKs.
wRiTiNg wItH aLtErNaTiNg lOwErCaSe aNd cApItAlS lIkE tHiS.
.siht ekil sdrawkcab gnitirw
wreteng whiri thi littirs “i” and “e” ari entirchangid leki thes.
ALL CAPS WRITING LIKE YOU GET SOMETIMES IN LEGALESE.
Although these are all fairly easy to read, especially in small quantities, and they are all things one can probably learn to read even more easily, they are all harder work and less pleasant to read than text written in the usual way, with normal spelling and punctuation and capitalization. Especially when they come in larger quantities. And I strongly agree with Said Achmiz that the main effects of using a substantially nonstandard style are (1) to make your readers’ lives a little bit less pleasant and (2) to send the message “I don’t care about your time or effort or pain” to your readers.
Now, of course, you may want to do those things. You may just enjoy making people suffer (this one’s fairly unlikely). You may be making a sort of status move (see, I am so much more important than you that I can inflict this cost on you and you’ll put up with it). You may be trying to select for readers who really want to read what you write. You may be trying to select for readers who are already used to the style you’re using (maybe it’s a subculture thing). You may be trying to select for readers whose brain hardware happens to make reading your different style of text particularly easy (maybe they’re cleverer). Etc.
But you should think hard about whether the selection effect you’re actually getting is the one you want. I think it probably isn’t.
I for one, would be all for a swap over to a no caps English, but my desire to not cause such a ruckuss as this over trivial aesthetic things out weighs it. If you think of all the extra effort/time you waste breaking your typing flow by having to capitilise letters at the beginning of sentences. Isn’t that what the period is supposed to before, to denote the end of a sentence and the start of a new. I do think capitals should be used for emphasis though, and for proper nouns if they intentionally choose to have a capital letter. Such as LaTeX.
Warning: demon thread ahead
just downvoted every reply in this subthread
Can you explain why?
I downvoted each contributor once. I don’t think the discussion is instrinsically bad and think there’s something worth discussing, but it’s not the topic of the post itself and not what I want it people to see by default. (interpret my downvote as “if you want to have this discussion [i.e. opinionated meta discussion about proper etiquette], you pay a tax to have the discussion”). I’d rather the conversation continue on Meta if people think it’s important.
(I also downvoted myself since I’m adding to the problem)
I agree with Raemon. I want to read about lex’s idea of target stress, not about lex’s use of capital letters, and I have no idea how to obtain this goal except, perhaps, writing a defense of not using capital letters and hoping the derailment works backwards.
[downvotes self]