That might equally be a stylistic choice, but I my gut says it's not.
And it’s especially bad in a blog or similar, where there is one writer and multiple readers. I spent maybe a few seconds on this post, but it will be read five, ten, fifty times. If I wrote the whole thing in text-message shorthand, it’d be stealing time from each of those readers.
It also helps people who do not have English as their first language if you avoid abbreviations and incorrect usage.
Any special reasons? Just because I like to know people through their choices and views. Didn't want to sound rude in the previous comment, so if I did, genuinely sorry (non-native speaker woes).
I feel it's in the same class as not using paragraphs, ignoring punctuation, or having egregious spelling mistakes.
It feels lazy and dumb, and honestly it taints whatever point you're trying to make.
1. writing in lowercase is freeing. it reminds me that grammatical rules are arbitrary, and by extension other rules. "you can just do things."
2. people who are pedantic about this when it's clearly intentional are probably not people i want to interact with anyway, so it's a good anti-asshole filter (https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1209794.html)
Capitalization goes hand-in-hand with punctuation. A period is only part of the formula that tells a reader that a complete thought is done. Capitalizing the next letter is a signal that the next complete thought is starting. The reader doesn't have to continually guess whether the punctuation was incorrectly or accidentally placed.
I pushed through your style choice and read the article because what you had to say was interesting and important. But not all readers are going to grant you the same courtesy. If you really want the widest distribution possible do your readers a favor and capitalize things according to the rules.
You used paragraphs and correct spelling, as well as avoiding things like run-on sentences and sentence fragments. It's obvious you want people to your read your work. Whatever reasons you have for choosing to not use capitalization, those reasons are not as important as the message you are trying to spread.
Besides, is lowercase poetry a fuck you to the reader as well?
Cheers!
Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
I guess it's like user interface design, where a cardinal rule is to be conservative, and not break user expectations unduly.
Of course UI patterns and language evolves, but the evolution of changes should probably be gradual, and done for a justifiable purpose. In this case, I'm not sure the stylistic choice actually adds anything to the clarity or beauty of the writing.
In a comment on another Rust-related post, the author noted that, "rust definitely skews younger than average. i don't have statistics on hand, but almost all people i know working on the project are younger than 35, and a surprising number are 17-25."
I've messed with Rust a bit and I like it. I like the ideas and lack of compromise. But good ideas and a lack of compromises are what you get from youth, along with the arrogance of style choices that make things harder to understand. Will Rust stick around once these folks have bigger responsibilities?frankly i don't want a larger audience, i didn't expect this to hit HN. i hadn't thought about it being harder to read for people in the project though, i'll do a poll on whether they find it distracting.
The HN mod team may find it not to their taste, but they don’t get to decide what is or isn’t generally interesting.
IMO content over style. Nobody owes you adherence to a particular set of rules, nor do they owe you their thoughts at all. If the writer's style is a bridge too far for you, kindly just close the tab, don't complain about it. Certainly don't use hateful words to describe them.
Remember, the same English teachers who taught you to capitalize also taught you that there is no singular "they" and that you should use "he/she" instead.
If I make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and offer it to my friend next to me, and someone across the street yells "How rude of you! I'm allergic to peanuts", I will just close the window and continue sharing sandwiches with my friend, not spend time arguing with the yelling guy across the street.
I sure hope we are allowed to criticize writers’ styles.
As an author, if you notice that your style choices are generating more interest and discussion than the actual content of your writing, it's probably worth considering whether the reasons that led you to those choices are really worth taking away from the messages you're trying to convey. Seeing as how the author of this post chimed in here to call their use of lowercase an "asshole filter," I suppose it's clear where they stand on that question.
I can see a future where we'll have browser extensions that use generative AI to "correct" style and grammar of articles to match the preferences of the reader, at which point stylistic choices may cease to matter as much.
idk about the author, but when i was younger, some people's pedantry and pettiness over grammar / capitalisation / more casual chatting got me to switch sides and deliberately stop using it as much. now it's also an aesthetic preference
i think there's potentially a valid point about accessibility concerns, but blog posts, chatrooms, and internet comments are also very informal modes of discourse
First: actor intentionally disrespected someone. Speaking in a movie theater, especially after being shushed. Using the letter "u" to mean "you" in formal business communication.
Second: actor unintentionally disrespected someone. Clipping your fingernails in class. Badly misspelling someone's name in a critical business communication.
Third: actor unintentionally makes an inconsequential error. Native English speakers misusing "it's" or "your" and their respective homophones, or missing antecedents ("As an expert, it's important to do X and Y" rather than "As an expert, I think it's important to do X and Y").
Fourth: actor intentionally makes an inconsequential error. Wearing obviously mismatched socks. Consistently writing in all lowercase.
The key, for me, is evaluating intent and impact. Group #1 is asshole: they mean to hurt or annoy. Group #2 is incompetent: they make mistakes that matter. Group #3 is hapless: they make mistakes that don't matter. Group #4 is quirky or aloof: they're not hurting anyone, and they're OK if people draw negative inferences about them, so hey, it's a free country.
You might reach different conclusions about the groups, or subdivide the groups further.
(Anticipating critiques of my examples: yes, I really do think that misspelling the English pronoun "you" is disrespectful. Misspell your own name if you want to move from Group #1 to Group #4, but please don't misspell the word that you're using to represent me. And clipping your nails in class is such over-the-top behavior that I believe it's more about upbringing than intentional disrespect.)
also, there are no spelling mistakes in my comment. perhaps consider learning about how words are spelled in british english vs american english? :)
> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
What the hell? English has rules. If those rules aren't followed, it makes communication needlessly more difficult.
This isn't just a typo we're talking about. This is someone making a deliberate choice to be harder to understand because they see it as quirky and cool.
You're exactly right, deliberately not using capitalization is akin to trolling.
Trolling is fun for the troll but it isn't that popular on HN unfortunately.
This just sounds like a self-troll, if you really think this
That is a completely different story. Using "they" is about respect. Using a standard form of writing is about making reading easier.
Oh, that is really a screwed thought. You think all people that don't agree with your writing format are assholes?
I wrote the original comment because I wanted to get some view on how a (selection biased) part of the population viewed it. I was surprised by how emotional people got!
whichofthesesentencesdidyoufindeasiertoreadhowcouldyoueventhinkthatinthefirstplace