I’ve noticed some of my friends are now blogging, which I wholeheartedly support. I’ll not link to them here, just to be a dick.
The problem I have with their blogs is their avoidance of the shift key – they use no capital letters. At all. Certainly, there are several instances where you don’t need to use capital letters:
- Command-line interfaces
- Instant Messaging
- SMS Messaging
- Quick emails to friends
However, any time that you intend for your writings to be read by a larger audience, it’s critical that you make your work readable in order to properly communicate your message. This means using such techniques as punctuation, capitalization, and breaking your work into paragraphs – and, for long enough documents, even sections and subsections.
The only effect that not applying these techniques has is masking your message behind a curtain of illegibility. It does not make you cool, artistic or special: it only makes you a lazy dick.
Here, here! For the love of Jebus people, it’s the internet where any Joe, Dick or Harry can find what you’ve written! Do you want to appear uncapable of understanding simple punctuation and grammar techniques?
Sorry, this is a pet-peeve of mine. I read grammar books for fun.
wait, wat u say? i didnt understand that at al. and wat r those bullet=like things/ how did u do those? i wish my blog was as cool as urs. plz reply on my yahoo1
well, what you forgot to consider was that someone using javascript on a daily basis lives in a case-sensetive world. when you write more in code than you do in english habits sometimes form.
to Lori’s point… while my grammar is by no means rodeo winning calibre, i feel that it is in the range of over par. most deviation from the norm is with intent. i’m also fairly on the mark when it comes to spelling words.
if anyone decides to base their hiring decision on the quality of my online text… well… they can, as far as i’m concerned, forget my application. a person is greater than the sum of their written words.
i’d also like to point out that the language we use now is not the language that has always been used. did you know that latin WAS WRITTEN IN ALL UPPERCASE LETTERS. of course, they simply called them ‘letters’ then… they hadn’t yet invented the lowercase letter. plus, they would have to wait until Gutenberg’s press came along so that ‘uppercase’ and ‘lowercase’ could be coined.
consider the ‘double space’ after a period. if you grew up when i did (and i know you did), you would have been taught that after a period you double space before the next character. prior to the invention of the typewriter this was not required… it was simply made up to get around a technological issue. no one got all too worked up about that minor amendment.