Does Random Capitalization bother you at all?

[Anonymous Axolotl]

This morning, I came across this article: https://mashable.com/article/capitalizing-first-letter-words-trend/?utm_source=pocket-newtab which was pretty neat. I’ve always wondered why some people Randomly Capitalize Words Like This. Or Sometimes Even Capitalize Every First Letter In Every Word Of A Sentence Like This.

 

(See how annoying that is? How many others are bothered by this?)

 

I totally get it if your phone or tablet or whatever decides to randomly capitalize words. Their programming is weird, why they decide to do it may not have any reason, but it at least makes some sense since a lot of the time, the person typing something won’t even notice their phone “corrected” them until too late and they leave it at that. It looks bad, but it does make more sense than the alternative.

 

When you’re intentionally capitalizing only certain words or even all words in a sentence, it not only looks horrible, but it often takes slightly longer to type and, in my opinion, comes across as really stupid. The article above mentioned some things I hadn’t thought of before, which was interesting, but overall, I still hate this trend. I can’t take a person seriously if they’re intentionally typing with random capitalization.

 

[LilacJay]

*blushes in German*

 

Guilty, but I have an alibi. In German, every noun is capitalized, so I sometimes catch myself capitalizing random nouns in English, too, after writing much in German.

[Anthracite_Impreza]

Yes, it annoys me, as does the rest of the butchery of the English language.

[I'mTheDecoy]

If it is completely random, then yes, it would annoy me.  But if you are using it for emphasis, usually comic emphasis, then I kind of love it.  Also, if it is a hashtag sentence, then ones that don't capitalise each word are monstrous.

[Anonymous Axolotl]

Just now, LilacJay said:

*blushes in German*

 

Guilty, but I have an alibi. In German, every noun is capitalized, so I sometimes catch myself capitalizing random nouns in English, too, after writing much in German.

When English isn't your native language, I can completely understand this happening. It's hard enough to learn English as it is considering it has so many ridiculous rules. With German being a language where nouns are capitalized, trying not to capitalize English nouns is something I can see being hard to adjust to and stick with.

 

I was mainly thinking about native English speakers who, for whatever reason, decide to go along with the random capitalization trend. They learned how to properly write in the language, and it's what they've been doing throughout their entire life, yet they are intentionally going against the rules for some reason. I find it quite irritating because it's as if they're trying to act special in some way, but to me it comes off annoying.

 

12 minutes ago, Anthracite_Impreza said:

Yes, it annoys me, as does the rest of the butchery of the English language.

Very much agreed. I hate "text speak" and try to avoid it as much as possible. On occasions where I do use it, I'm in a huge rush and often feel gross about typing it.

 

5 minutes ago, I'mTheDecoy said:

If it is completely random, then yes, it would annoy me.  But if you are using it for emphasis, usually comic emphasis, then I kind of love it.  Also, if it is a hashtag sentence, then ones that don't capitalise each word are monstrous.

I can see how with the intent of comedic emphasis, it can be fun since the person isn't wanting to be taken seriously anyway. It still feels strange to me and looks awkward, but if done properly for a comedy reason, I agree that it's not a bother as much. Ah, yeah I hadn't thought about hashtags. I'm not much of a social media person, so that really didn't cross my mind. I can see how writing a multi-word hashtag without any capitalization would be a pain to read.

[I'mTheDecoy]

12 minutes ago, Anonymous Axolotl said:

Ah, yeah I hadn't thought about hashtags. I'm not much of a social media person, so that really didn't cross my mind. I can see how writing a multi-word hashtag without any capitalization would be a pain to read.

If you don't capitalise in a hashtag (which many people don't) you can end up with people reading the wrong words or even rude words slipping in.  It is also difficult for people with poor eyesight or reading disorders to understand, so I think it is both common sense and common courtesy to capitalise within a hashtag - as well as just making your own point clear and easy to read, which one would think you would want when self-promoting or whatever.  The real trouble with hashtags is that you can't use any punctuation.  Many an apostrophe has died.

[Anonymous Axolotl]

@I'mTheDecoy

Wow, those are a ton of things I didn't think of! I didn't even realize that apostrophes aren't usable in them. I guess this shows how out of touch I am with how social media is used.

[RoseGoesToYale]

Not really. Apparently in English this used to be a thing.

 

Direct quote of a passage from Milne's The House at Pooh Corner, copyright 1928, unedited:

Quote

Pooh began to feel a little more comfortable, because when you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

The effect seems to be making the capitalized concepts into proper nouns, including verbs, so perhaps remains of old Germanic grammar? Though using title caps for every word in a sentence is kind of counterproductive, since it looks like they're quoting a book or article title.

[BumbleBeee]

I like it if the thing which has been capitalized is being capitalized for specific emphasis- it's and odd style, but one I find amusing if not abused. Terry Pratchet made use of this concept in a lot of his writing.

[Anonymous Axolotl]

@RoseGoesToYale Very good point! I remember reading some classics in the past and seeing some seemingly nonsensical capitalization. It does look pretty awkward. Language is constantly evolving so maybe, for whatever reason, that was the norm back then, but then it somehow became abnormal to have capitalization like that. It'd be interesting to read some sort of analysis on why that happened. I hope it doesn't formally come back too much since it makes things confusing and/or annoying in most cases.

 

@BumbleBeee I can see it working well for comedic purposes, but it still feels a bit awkward for me. That's probably just due to how I'm so used to capitalization by normal English rules, so seeing something "improper" feels slightly annoying and draws my attention away from what's going on. That being said, I feel like a lot of time when it's used for emphasis, it's more comedic emphasis than an attempt to emphasize something serious. If it's the latter, it bothers me quite a bit since it comes off as ridiculous.

 

I wasn't aware Terry Pratchet used capitalization for emphasis in his writing. I've been meaning to read Good Omens now that I've seen the mini-series, but now I'm even more intrigued considering the style of comedy in that show. It'd be interesting to see how it's written.

[BumbleBeee]

Just now, Anonymous Axolotl said:

 

@BumbleBeee I can see it working well for comedic purposes, but it still feels a bit awkward for me. That's probably just due to how I'm so used to capitalization by normal English rules, so seeing something "improper" feels slightly annoying and draws my attention away from what's going on. That being said, I feel like a lot of time when it's used for emphasis, it's more comedic emphasis than an attempt to emphasize something serious. If it's the latter, it bothers me quite a bit since it comes off as ridiculous.

 

I wasn't aware Terry Pratchet used capitalization for emphasis in his writing. I've been meaning to read Good Omens now that I've seen the mini-series, but now I'm even more intrigued considering the style of comedy in that show. It'd be interesting to see how it's written.

Yes, I prefer it for comedic emphasis as well. I read Good Omens before I saw the mini series (about 5 years ago) and it does use it for comedic emphasis throughout the book. Great example of it, in fact.

[everywhere and nowhere]

Yes, it bothers me. I sometimes use capitalisation to emphasise something, particularly for a kind of ironic emphasis. Too much capitalisation of random words disrupts it.

Someone mentioned German and indeed, here I'm influenced by my native spelling too. Generally, English seems to use much more capitalisation than Polish. Characteristic patterns:

- In English typically all words in a title are capitalised, with the exception of prepositions and such stuff. In Polish nope, further words in a title are written with a small letter, unless they are proper names. (For example: "Grapes of Wrath", Polish translation: "Grona gniewu".) By the way, I make a little use of it in the book topic ("What are you currently reading?"): if I'm writing a title in English, but according to Polish, not English rules, it means that it's a book which, as far as I know, has never been published in English.

- In English both words for inhabitant of a country and adjectives derived from the name of a country are capitalised (for example: English(wo)man, English), in Polish only the former (for example: Anglik / Angielka, angielski). By the way, in some languages, for example Nordic and Eastern Slavic, both categories are written with a small letter (Norwegian: englender, engelsk; Russian: англичанин, английский).

- In English names of religions and believers are capitalised, in Polish not.

This last category seems to be particularly expanded - some people seem to expand it yet further to ideologies, stances or even sexual orientations. I find it annoying if "asexuality" or "romantic attraction" is capitalised. To emphasise it, one can for example underline it instead...

[everywhere and nowhere]

Oh, and by the way:

Quote

In some extreme cases, people follow capped words with a trademark symbol to jokingly claim ownership of a phrase in a more official way.

And how is it typed??

[Philip027]

Whenever I do this I'm probably trying to convey sarcasm.  It isn't as random as you think.

[Amcan]

I cAn't Say thaT iT dOeS.

[BumbleBeee]

42 minutes ago, Nowhere Girl said:

Oh, and by the way:

And how is it typed??

The Gays™ have asked if they can have a turn on the equal rights, and the us government said no 

 

                -a text I sent the other day about a bill in congress

[daveb]

As long as it is used purposefully for a specific effect I don't tend to mind, but there are exceptions even to that. Too much capitalization makes it more difficult to read and parse text. Similar reason to why I don't like the over-use of display fonts, especially in blocks of text.

 

I'm also not much of a social media user (never been on twitter, don't use hashtags, or any of that stuff). 

[Anonymous Axolotl]

@Nowhere Girl Wow, that's all really interesting! I'm always amazed at how different languages can be while still sharing some similarities.  As for the trademark symbol, you can do it with a shortcut, but it depends on the type of device you have. On a Mac, you make the symbol by pressing and holding the option key down and then hitting the 2 key.

 

@Philip027 True, but there are cases where I know people do it that aren't for sarcasm. I haven't noticed it on this site, but there are other sites where I've seen some people exclusively use capitals for the first letter of every word in everything they type, regardless of what they're talking about. People like that aren't that common to come across, but still annoying.

 

1 hour ago, daveb said:

Too much capitalization makes it more difficult to read and parse text.

I very much agree. It really distracts from what the person is trying to convey.

[Skycaptain]

Blame autocorrect, which randomly capitalises words, uses a weird mix of English and American spellings, which combined with trying to do several things at once, results in grammatical faux pas 

[everywhere and nowhere]

2 hours ago, BumbleBeee said:

The Gays™ have asked if they can have a turn on the equal rights, and the us government said no 

 

                -a text I sent the other day about a bill in congress

Now, I mean: what to press to have this sign typed?

I use Windows 7.

[everywhere and nowhere]

And again I can't add another quote to a post already sent...

1 hour ago, Skycaptain said:

Blame autocorrect, which randomly capitalises words, uses a weird mix of English and American spellings, which combined with trying to do several things at once, results in grammatical faux pas 

I avoid using autocorrect at all, both in the browser and in text editing programs. Well, I sometimes do make typos (my absolutely typical typo in English: pressing ; instead of ', the result is for example "don;t"), but I trust myself enough to know that I won't make spelling mistakes in the strict sense, at least in Polish. Already at the beginning of primary school I didn't, because I went to primary school as already an efficient reader.

Also, I am not going to use plain, style-less language - and a part of my own style are, for example, neologisms - in English for example "whif" (when-if), "thoughtfeeling", "omnisensation".

[daveb]

7 minutes ago, Nowhere Girl said:

Now, I mean: what to press to have this sign typed?

I use Windows 7.

There are usually shortcut keys or key combinations to type such things, but what I usually do is find the thing in question and copy/paste it.  

[Squirrel Combat]

nOt REalLY.

[Ashmedai]

I don't think it's annoying per se, but I do find it rather pointless.

[BumbleBeee]

7 hours ago, Nowhere Girl said:

Now, I mean: what to press to have this sign typed?

I use Windows 7.

I just google "TM sign" and copy and paste the symbol.

[Grumpy Alien]

YES! My phone does it all the time when I’m in chat on mobile and it’s so annoying. It makes the typer look illiterate.

[erf]

It Is Kinda Annoying When People Capitalize Every Word Like This

[Guest]

I mean, for a title to an article, thread or even business name to name a few. I expect to see capitalized words. 

 

But randomly? Never experienced it. 

[Salmiakki]

I don't really care 

[I'mTheDecoy]

Those examples above from Milne and Pratchett are the sort of thing I was talking about - it is often used for comic effect.