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Why Do People Type like This?
- Thread starter Dekema2
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I did that for many, many, many years. I have a feeling that it may have something to do with typing with one hand and getting into the habit of reaching for the Shift key. You Start To Do It Again And Again And Again.
To my mind what is much worse IS WHEN THEY TYPE LIKE THIS ..all screaming, psycho capital letters ..
Anyway, re your OP and original question asked, no I can't say that I have noticed such a thing.
Moreover, if anyone was fool enough to write to me in such terms, they would rapidly receive a response that would leave my views on such matters quite clear.
I'm sure you have a diversity of reasons for using "Times New Roman". Others enjoy using "CAPS", "UNDERLINES" and other stuff, with the same expectation of tolerance, so lets ALL ENJOY IT!!! (I'm gay & you're sophisticated!!!!
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Interesting theories!
Personally I think the shift scenario Jessica brought up made the most sense. I think the phenomena occurs with someone who is highly trained in keyboarding and screaming on forums.
Personally I think the shift scenario Jessica brought up made the most sense. I think the phenomena occurs with someone who is highly trained in keyboarding and screaming on forums.
No, I haven't noticed that. It's very odd. And it's not caps, it's "Title Case"
Trying to make their utterances look more important? Who knows?
Indeed. If these shouty people are trying to be heard, they're going about it the wrong way! BLOCK CAPITALS are actually harder to read, because they lack the ascenders and descenders that give words their unique visual shape.
Humans don't read words letter-by-letter but, by and large, recognize words by their unique shape. So by making EVERY WORD SHAPE A BORING AND UNDISTINGUISHED RECTANGLE, THE SHOUTY ONES ARE INADVERTENTLY MAKING THEIR MESSAGE harder TO HEAR.
(See, you slowed down to read that last bit)
I did indeed slow down to read it, and I think you made your point pretty well.
Now, when I was a kid trying to type on my mother's typewriter, I thought words commencing with caps, or sentences with nothing but capital letters were seriously cool.
These days, I like to think I know a bit better.
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I'm sure you have a diversity of reasons for using "Times New Roman". Others enjoy using "CAPS", "UNDERLINES" and other stuff, with the same expectation of tolerance, so lets ALL ENJOY IT!!! (I'm gay & you're sophisticated!!!!
Re fonts, I like TNR, and think it pleasing to the eye; I love Garamond and Arno Pro, - relaxing, elegant and classic fonts which are beautiful and legible - but I am reliably informed that they do not seem to translate all that well online. More is the pity.
Besides, the facility exists to use them, so why not?
The OP's original question concerned whether some of the rest of us had experienced individuals using capital letters at the start of every word. Studying German, you will encounter the somewhat disconcerting (for an English or French speaker anyway) situation where nouns - all nouns - are capitalised, not just proper nouns, as is the case in English.
So, yes, languages and settings vary. As do contexts. Most of the time, most people don't use caps at the start of every word. If someone did it in an email at work, I'd ask mildly whether there was a reason; if such a thing appeared as a post-office hours invitation to - say - a party, you wouldn't even notice it, as such communications, are, by their very nature, a lot more informal.
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Who can remember the fictional character that typed in all lower case because it was a mouse or something - and he or she stepped onto the typewriter keys?
I noticed this from time to time, and I actually got into the habit somehow back many years ago. It wasn't until my English professor in college questioned why I was doing it, that I too wondered. It was a habit that snuck that I had not even noticed.
My point - I believe people are doing it without even releasing it.
My point - I believe people are doing it without even releasing it.
I have seen it several times on here and elsewhere. Some people use that method as an obnoxious means of emphasizing (in their mind) certain words or sentences. These people are cousins of those who type in all caps.
I used to accidentally do that years ago, and I can tell you exactly why:
I would copy a cd to my computer via Windows Media Player, and before the internet found the cd's information, and put in it's own title tracks, I would have to type in all the information, like
1) Stairway to Heaven
2)Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
3) Dark Side of the Moon
etc, and after doing that for so long, you slowly get into the habit of doing it for regular sentences. but that was a LONG time ago, so I'm not sure that current offenders of that typing would do that automatically.
I would copy a cd to my computer via Windows Media Player, and before the internet found the cd's information, and put in it's own title tracks, I would have to type in all the information, like
1) Stairway to Heaven
2)Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
3) Dark Side of the Moon
etc, and after doing that for so long, you slowly get into the habit of doing it for regular sentences. but that was a LONG time ago, so I'm not sure that current offenders of that typing would do that automatically.
I think that peoples, messages on this forum should be judged by their substance, and not whether they use caps or not.
So long as the message is readable, makes sense, and complies with forum rules, why should you even care?
So long as the message is readable, makes sense, and complies with forum rules, why should you even care?
Actually, some forum software programs can be set so that if someone types in all caps that the message will be automatically displayed so that only the first letter of each word is in caps.
I suppose everyone is different, but I actually find ALL CAPS easier to read than Someone Capitalizing The First Letter Of Every Word In A Sentence.
I think it probably relates back to the way I read, as I tend to see a capital letter at the beginning of a word as the start of a new sentence(unless it's something like a proper noun or other place where it's grammatically appropriate).
ALL CAPS bothers me, but I can read it more easily than random first letter capitalizations.
Yeah! And your saying that gave me a vision of the teacher I had that year who had introduced us to it. (Now all I need to do is flush that vision from my mind.)
i believe ours is set to make them all lower case!
Now with noparse tags:
I BELIEVE OURS IS SET TO MAKE THEM ALL LOWER CASE!
If you take a look at old medieval manuscripts, (or Latin inscriptions from Roman times) you will see that the idea of putting spaces between words is a relatively recent one (one which would have aided the process of legibility and possible speed, I suspect).
I was astounded when I first learnt about this, and indeed, likewise about how the distinction between lower and upper case letters was developed. It is an extraordinarily interesting area to read about.
I'm embarrassed to admit that I do capitalize a word mid-sentence, possibly frequently. English is a second language and I didn't learn it until I was six --and also learning German. In German, all nouns are capitalized. So I think it all blended together.
In the german language all nouns are capitalized. I sometimes capitalize and misspell by accident and I am to lazy to correct it. I also refuse to put importance on correct spelling, since it is an arbitrary invention anyway. In Goethe's times kids were encouraged to spell the same word in many different ways. I also noticed that the biggest morons tend to be the proudest of their awesome spelling abilities.
I gotch'ya!
It's also nice that your refusal coincides with the laziest possible option. I find that my reading comprehension increases with the frequency of correctly spelled words, so if people want to be understood, correct spelling isn't all that arbitrary.I've never been able to glean the IQ of people squabbling over spelling, but I'm am rather annoyed when any correction drags on longer than the time it would take to actually understand one's mistake.
I also find that, with the myriad of emotions I feel might be misrepresented or bastardized when conveyed textually, it's nice to make sure the elements forming the idea are coherent.
Now, to not agonize over any potenrial typos
