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Notes -
Why are people now Writing like This with Semi-Randomly capitalized Letters?
I thought it was Kulak trying to appeal to a boomer audience, who I associate with this kind of thing. I thought Kulak also had some kind of issue with typing, he was using text to speech or something which might cause this issue.
But OSINTDefender is also doing it on twitter: https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1713559468913340546
Does anyone have an explanation or theory? I personally really dislike it, it's confusing and unnecessary since it doesn't seem to have any rhetorical function either. You can play games with capitalizing or decapitalizing words as some US newspapers do, capitalizing black but not white. But that's not what's happening here, there's no clear rule.
I used to work with a girl who wrote like this. We had to co-write reports once a month, and she was constantly talking about how "the Government decisions have made a major impact on the Company's ability to do business" or whatever. I was so relieved when she left the company and I could write the reports properly.
There's a certain species of midwit who seems to think that any Noun or Adjective which seems Important in some way must be capitalised.
Criticised in one of my favourite books How Not to Write a Novel (which was published in 2008, so obviously it was fairly common in unpublished fiction even then):
Stop being so hateful and condescending. Proper "improper" capitalization can actually improve clarity. There's a reason why people do it.
It's not "hateful" to say that a particular writing style annoys you. Does finding it annoying when people misuse the word "literally" make you a bigot? Obviously not.
Sure, it can. But is "the Government decisions have made a major impact on the Company's ability to do business" any more clear in meaning than "the government decisions have made a major impact on the company's ability to do business"? No, obviously not. It's an irritating stylistic quirk that doesn't aid in conveying one's meaning at all.
You called a person you Know a certain species of midwit. I think "midwit," even in the abstract, is not nice, but it's at least excusable.
I believe that capitalizing words improves readability. This is something I'm used to seeing in philosophy. Capitalized terms denote specific concepts or ideas that are different from the general meaning. For instance, when you capitalize "Company," it signifies your specific workplace. I find it clear. I mean, even Rationalists do this a lot too.
Of course it's not nice, but it's not "hateful". If you'll read my original comment closely, you'll notice that I never said that this stylistic choice is never justifiable, only that it's often done to no good end by people who don't understand the purpose it's meant to be used for.
You're right, sorry.
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