Capitalizing Every First Letter

[Vaughn MacKenzie]

I Have Noticed A Few Guys Have Been Posting Like I Am Right Now, Capitalizing The First Letter Of Every Word. What's Up With That? I Have Been On TDR Since 1999 But NEVER Saw This Until A Few Months Ago. And Now I See It Often. Clearly It Takes More Work To Type Like This Than all lowercase or ALL CAPS.



Even Worse It's The MOST Annoying To Read.



So Just Curious If There's A Reason For It. LOL



Vaughn

 

[GFritsch]

i DON'T kNOW wHY, bUT iT iS aNNOYING!

 

[Nate]

I don't even bother reading stuff that has horrible spelling or grammar. Can't take the time to write half-way proper, I don't need to waste my time trying to read it.

 

[Grunt]

I Have Noticed A Few Guys Have Been Posting Like I Am Right Now, Capitalizing The First Letter Of Every Word. What's Up With That? I Have Been On TDR Since 1999 But NEVER Saw This Until A Few Months Ago. And Now I See It Often. Clearly It Takes More Work To Type Like This Than all lowercase or ALL CAPS.



Even Worse It's The MOST Annoying To Read.



So Just Curious If There's A Reason For It. LOL



Vaughn

To Irritate You Vaughn

 

[Hohn]

I don't even bother reading stuff that has horrible spelling or grammar. Can't take the time to write half-way proper, I don't need to waste my time trying to read it.

I'm sure you meant half-way properly

 

[keimmmo]

I too find it annoying and more difficult to read. I know I make mistakes in my spelling and grammer. I feel sorry for the guys who struggle to write. However, I know some really good mechanics who are lousy writers! I have struggled with dyslexia (SP?) my whole life. Part of that includes poor spelling, so I can understand that part.



Steve Keim

 

[Gary - K7GLD]

I occasionally get criticized for my use of caps as word emphasis - such as I really LIKE ice cream...



Yeah, the "cap, punctuation and grammar police" really seem to go out of their way to be irritated and find fault - and I suppose that if my use of cap letters is the WORSE (oooops, did it again!) they can criticise in my stuff, that's not too bad. :-laf



Most of the occasional conflicts I encounter on boards like this relate to misunderstandings caused by reader inability to accurately interpret the intended meaning of what the poster wrote - written words are very dry and devoid of inflection and emphasis common to the spoken word.



Take a simple sentence with only 3 words, using, in this case, caps for emphasis:





1. *I* like that.

2. I *LIKE* that.

3. I like *THAT*.



The simple switching of word emphasis substantially alters the meaning of the simple sentence - and if the reader is left to imagine and supply his own word emphasis, he may well misjudge the intent of the sentence.



Some use italics or boldface for emphasis, but in my case it's far easier to just hold down the shift key and enter caps for emphasis, than it is to type out the word, then go back, hilite the word, and then select the italic or boldface code - OK, so I'm lazy...



But to me, getting all hung up on something so trivial and harmless as capped words and minor deviations in sentence structure - while we willingly ignore the far greater sin of needless personal references and abuse, is a real puzzle. :-{}

 

[cojhl2]

1. *I* like that. 

2. I *LIKE* that. 

3. I like *THAT*.

My favorite by Lou Asner on SNL "Remember, you can't put too much water in a Nuclear Reactor!"

 

[SLangegger]

Vaughn,



Maybe its the "two fingered typers"?

You've seen the guys before. They look for the next key in a systematical fashion. Left to right, top to bottom or vice versa. Then when they finally find it, WHAMMY! They smack that sucker. Possibly, the capitalization is like a mini celebration that they finally finished the last word. After all, the shift key has two locations, and they never change.



Gary,



If you have critics, then I have them for the same reason. (As seen above) :-laf

 

[Grunt]

Vaughn,



Maybe its the "two fingered typers"?

You've seen the guys before. They look for the next key in a systematical fashion. Left to right, top to bottom or vice versa. Then when they finally find it, WHAMMY! They smack that sucker. Possibly, the capitalization is like a mini celebration that they finally finished the last word. After all, the shift key has two locations, and they never change.



Gary,



If you have critics, then I have them for the same reason. (As seen above) :-laf

Hey. . there's nothing wrong with us "two fingered typers", well not much anyway

 

[Nate]

My first language is not english and I am mildly dyslexic. I am able to write posts that doesn't take an Ovaltine secret decoder ring to figure out.

 

[T-Bone]

Brings this to mind...



Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it

deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod

are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and

lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a

total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a

porbelm.

Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey

lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.



Who took the time to figure this out...



T-Bone

 

[cojhl2]

Thats very interesting. I read that with no problem. However I still lock on the mistakes of "their" vs "there" and "your" vs "you're".



So although the brain recognizes words as T-Bone says the brain is also decoding the rest of the word.



Pretty neat isn't it?

 

[Boondocker]

write right

I'm more often irritated by my own writing mistakes than the poor skills or results of others. I write, proof read, and edit a lot on the job - technical manuals, bulletins, reports, and written communication. It kills me how many mistakes I make on a first draft, mostly missing words. Thank God for spell checkers too!



Call me old fashioned, but the style that peeves me the most is the instant messaging style that reads like a sentence on a 7-character license plate. To that I say, I value your message almost as much as the effort you put into writing it. As for the styling attributes - bold, italics, CAPS, color, size, font, Smileys - that's what it's there for, just try to use it responsibly because it looses value quickly when over done.



I try to believe that the content of the message is more important than the presentation, which means the presentation still has value. If the presentation is poor and the content is lacking, forget it.



Now let's talk about penmanship :-laf



Neil

 

[JOdell]

back to the original question. I think that some people may be writing on their PDA and mine will capitalize the first letter in every word so maybe that is what it is. Jason

 

[Vaughn MacKenzie]

To Irritate You Vaughn

But Skip, I was already irritated :-laf

The simple switching of word emphasis substantially alters the meaning of the simple sentence - and if the reader is left to imagine and supply his own word emphasis, he may well misjudge the intent of the sentence.



Some use italics or boldface for emphasis, but in my case it's far easier to just hold down the shift key and enter caps for emphasis, than it is to type out the word, then go back, hilite the word, and then select the italic or boldface code - OK, so I'm lazy...

I do that sometimes too Gary, but I've never understood the *asterisks* that go along with it

Maybe its the "two fingered typers"?

I've met some pretty special keyboard peckers in my life

I think that some people may be writing on their PDA and mine will capitalize the first letter in every word so maybe that is what it is.

Hmm, good point James, that could be it.

 

[bmoeller]

Vaughn,



Maybe its the "two fingered typers"?

Not from this one.



I use 2 fingers most of the time. But, I also try to go back through and check everything over before I post. Sometimes I'll miss one or 2, and edit it afterwards.



There is a difference between "2 finger typers" and people who hunt and peck. I don't do that. Pretty fast the way I do it. Typing the "proper" way slows me down.

 

[HOBrian]

Brings this to mind...



Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it

deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod

are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and

lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a

total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a

porbelm.

Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey

lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.



Who took the time to figure this out...



T-Bone

T-Bone, you just gave me a headache! :-laf

 

[ToolManTimTaylor]

Might *I* point out the excerpt below from our own website rules.



TDR Guidelines





<hr>



9. Proper Punctuation Pleases the Public. Remember that TYPING IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS is akin to shouting. Also, the excessive use of exclamation marks and other punctuation can make your posting difficult to read, not to mention irritating. Remember, misspelled words reflect poorly on you.

 

[Dl5treez]

You can surf TDR on a Blackberry, other PDA's, and some cell phones, too. They usually capitalize the first letter of every word, which is probably where it's coming from.



I'll echo Tim's point about all caps being akin to shouting---our html allows the use of italics if a person wants to put emphasis on certain words.