Comment by 4ggr0
2 days ago
i don't want to press the shift-key everytime i need a capitalized letter on my phone and i disable auto-correct because it constantly messes with native languages etc.
wasn't aware that this makes me a steve jobs copier :(
EDIT: people are seriously so emotionally invested in capitalization that i get downvoted into minus, jeez.
When you consciously choose to save yourself effort in writing, at the expense of the readers who are trying to make sense of what you are saying, the people onto whom you've transferred the cognitive load are not likely to appreciate your laziness.
your comment contains one, single, capitalized letter. if the first W in your comment would have been small, would that have made your comment so much harder to read?
does it make my comment so hard to read just because i don't start my sentences with big letters and don't capitalize myself(i)? really don't get the fuzz.
of course i capitalize letters in "official" texts, but we're in a comment section.
i find it doubly funny because english doesn't capitalize lots of things, anyways.
Hey, sorry! I don't want you to feel bad, and I don't think you should.
I think there are legitimate reasons to struggle with things like capital letters, and you've named a few: non-native language and interface device limitations. There's other accessibility reasons too, like I have some dyslexic family members who use less capitalisation than most. Also, direct or casual communication with individuals, the impact of the extra cognitive load is minimal - 1 or 2 people - so again, no real issue.
The problem I have with this piece is that it's clearly meant to be an intellectual or academic-adjacent piece, and it's clearly meant to be public/read by many people - that's why we're reading it on Hackernews. The author is not putting in the extra few seconds required to fix the problem when writing, and as a result, many thousands of people lose a few seconds each when reading. I feel there must be a point where the cost of the extra reading time to humanity outweighs the benefits of the intellectual contribution - I can't really tell because even if I overlook the capitalisation, I'm not smart enough to understand it anyway.
> Hey, sorry! I don't want you to feel bad, and I don't think you should.
no worries, but apologies accepted, and sorry that i make you read my non-capitalized comments :)
> The problem I have with this piece is that it's clearly meant to be an intellectual or academic-adjacent piece
that's a good point i hadn't considered. i am of course for correct capitalization and grammar in "serious" documents etc., HN for me is more like a blog. but HN links to third-party, "serious" sites, where such things should matter.
> many thousands of people lose a few seconds each when reading.
i guess i can't really comprehend why some struggle with reading non-capitalized texts in english, because it doesn't matter to my brain. but valuable to know, that other people prefer it.
> I'm not smart enough to understand it anyway.
+1. at least we can discuss about language, so it's not that we're too dumb in general ;)
> EDIT: people are seriously so emotionally invested in capitalization that i get downvoted into minus, jeez.
I find it weird that you would be surprised that people care about the quality of textual communication
maybe because i use downvotes differently than others. downvote for me means, that someone either outright lies, is very disrespectful or adds nothing to the discussion.
i don't see it as a "i don't agree with this comment"-button. opinions differ, i guess :)
For completeness: I also disable all autocorrect/autocomplete on mobile because it's more trouble than it's worth, but I leave auto-capitalisation on. This is a thing, they're independent settings.
i absolutely HATE every automated keyboard-"helper", ever.
type in multiple languages constantly and all of these helpers constantly default to english usage. plus it would be weird to me if every sentence starts with a capital letter but the rest is left as it is. seems like such an arbitrary solution.