An aside: please use proper capitalization. With this article I found myself backtracking thinking I’d missed a word, which was very annoying. Not sure what the authors intention was with that decision but please reconsider.
replies(10):
I'm all for Graham's pyramid of disagreement: we should focus on the core argument, rather than superfluous things like tone, or character, or capitalisation.
But this is too much for me personally. I just realised I consider the complete lack of capitalisation on a piece of public intellectual work to be obnoxious. Sorry, it's impractical, distracting and generates unnecessary cognitive load for everyone else.
You're the top comment right now, and it's not about the content of the article at all, which is a real shame. All the wasted thought cycles across so many people :(
It's the new black turtleneck that everyone is wearing, but will swear upon their mother's life isn't because they're copying Steve Jobs.
Sam still uses capitalization in all of his essays, as do most people (including young people). In essays, like this one, it's distracting without it. I predict in 10 years the vast majority of people will all-lowercase on places like Twitter but almost no one will do it for essays.
Just looked at the algorithmic feed on Twitter to makes sure trends haven't shifted overnight, and zero people in that sample of hundreds of tweets used all lower case in the tweets. Not in science. Not in AI. Not in maths or politics or entertainment or media.
Sam is trying to bE dIFFERENT. He isn't adopting a norm but instead he's trying to make one. It looks ridiculous.
Half true. In SMS it was just easier, but in IM it mostly was a thing because the IM client's message boundaries acted as markers for beginning/end of sentence, making the formatting unnecessary. That's why using correct capitalization and periods for single sentences came to be associated with a more formal/serious tone, it was unnecessary so including it meant you wanted to emphasize it.
Even back then we'd use regular formatting outside of IM or when sending multiple sentences in a single message.
> He's adopting the native culture rather than setting a trend.
If this was the intent, it's really coming off as that "Hello, fellow kids" meme, rather than genuine.
That is the professional Twitter class and is not at all representative of the norm. Click through to the replies. Sentence case is probably in the vast minority.
I promise you that it is neither a fad nor started with the AI bro.
Maybe he should consider there are different registers of language, and code-switching is a thing. This now increasingly applies to written language, not just spoken language.
Writing this way in structured, formal discourse would be equivalent to a CEO using internet memes and trendy slang in board meetings.