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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   5140 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 24, 2023

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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.

Given the happenings in Gaza I thought it would be a good time to deep dive the last time a major westernized technologically advanced Military took on an enemy tunnelled in under third world cities and Suburbs.

The Us at the time of the Vietnam war had A population of 200 million, the Combined north and South Vietnamese population was 41 million, 1/5th.

But OSINTDefender is also doing it on twitter: https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1713559468913340546

the Group of Hamas Terrorist appear to be walking through a Settlement as they are Ambushed and Liquidated by an Unknown Gunman.

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one of my favourite books How Not to Write a Novel (which was published in 2008, so obviously it was fairly common in unpublished fiction even then):

Similarly, some writers, displaying either an admirable knowledge of sixteenth-century English literature or a fondness for the German way of doing things, will Capitalize Important Nouns, or Anything Else that seems Significant. (This is not a reference to those writers participating in the current vogue for self-conscious Ironic Capitalization; we are speaking here to those writers who assume that Love and Honor deserve initial capitals because they are Eternally Important.)

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):

Great book. I remember liking it because however bad my writing might be, at least I don't write like that.

JK Rowling's capitalizations are particularly egregious (there used to be a Potterwords blog as an aid to fan fiction writers, because the things that were and were not capitalized in the Potterverse were so inconsistent).

Not even the most glaring of all of Rowling's stylistic quirks.

That one I chalk up to the fact that she's a fan of 19th and early 20th century British literature.

Stop being so hateful and condescending. Proper "improper" capitalization can actually improve clarity. There's a reason why people do it.

What is the purpose of this excessive reaction? Stop being so belligerent.

My response is fine. People should be kinder.

If you get a red modhat comment telling you not to post something, your comment is not fine.

You asked me a question. I responded with my reasoning. And my opinion is not going to change, red modhat comment or not.

That person called their coworker a midwit. Not in passing, but as a directed insult. This is rude and I don't like it.

No ruder than calling someone a "cuck", surely. Get off your high horse.

I do not personally know Tom Scott

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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.

Proper "improper" capitalization can actually improve clarity.

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.

I think "midwit," even in the abstract, is not nice, but it's at least excusable.

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.

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.

Hard disagree. If this were some sort of essay or some excerpt from a book, I would agree with you completely. But if this is for some sort of report that's being written for work, then consistently capitalizing Government and Company like this would greatly aid in clarity and comprehension when reading the document. Now, if it's inconsistent or one-off, then yeah, that's strictly worse than just using proper capitalization. But if it's consistent, that aids in comprehension speed greatly in my experience.

To each their own, I suppose.

In those examples I don't like it, I think it's poorly used. Rationalist types tend to do it better, or DFW, or Trump, for emphasis or to elevate the word or phrase.

I can only comment on its aesthetic qualities but it very much feels like a raising, a visual bump in the text that is not as grating as italics or bold but still noticable. Kind of like braille.

Kulak has previously stated that he does it deliberately to confuse present or hypothetical future stylometry, though this always seemed like the net usefulness would be dubious and the "aesthetic choice to look like grandpa's Facebook tirades" theory is quite plausible.

Ah, good point. It does still read like Kulak to my eyes, you can still sense a part of his soul in it.

Also future AI stylometry will be based on much more deep context of stuff like word choice, sentence structure, which adjectives are overused, sentence length, rhythm and so on that are largely subconscious for most of us, including Kulak. This is like trying to fool an LLM by misspelling a prompt.

I think it’s a form of emphasis especially on Twitter where more traditional formatting options (like italics and bold type) aren’t available.

That's what asterisks are for.

I call this "constitutional writing". Only the capitalized verbs throw me off.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Very infrequent capitalization in English only for some proper nouns is very much a 20th century thing. Many 19th century texts capitalize many more words than we’d do today, earlier texts even moreso. The Wikipedia page on capitalization in English has some good examples, including the constitution, apparently it wasn’t until the very late 19th century that it really faded almost completely.

If Someone is capitalizing only Nouns, I usually assume it's a slightly-confused German.

I do occasionally capitalize things that are discrete concepts (The Powers That Be) or nouns of particular reverence (The Lord), but the examples you provided seem hastily written. Title case might be acceptable for a Tweet, though.

I see Scott Alexander do it occasionally to add emphasis to words, in a similar manner to italics or bolding, and I think it works to good effect when he does it. Nearly everyone else who does it, I do find it harder to read their writing as the capitals seem to be basically random and not actually based on emphasis.

I'm fairly certain Scott does it because Yudkowsky did, and it spread to a bunch of other people on LessWrong. Yud himself has done it since forever, e.g. here ("the Other Reality [...]") in 1997. No clue where he got it from however.

I'm not sure, but usually I'm either capitalizing for emphasis, or it's because I'm typing on something without a keyboard. My first guess would be a really dysfunctional spelling aid system on a device with no keyboard.

@KulakRevolt

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