Comment by bowsamic

2 days ago

> since the extra effort to hit shift when typing on a phone keyboard is a bit higher, and the additional effort to go back and fix any typos that happen due to trying to capitalize things is also higher compared to using a traditional keyboard

I'm a bit confused about this. Do people turn off auto capitalisation on their phones? I very rarely have to press shift on my phone

I and everyone I know turns it off. On many platforms and in many cultures, capitalization often implies Solemness or even rudeness in 1-on-1 conversations, and otherwise comes across as being out of touch in other kinds of communication.

  • I’ve never encountered anyone turning it off. I avoid socialising with people who think it’s rude to use capitalisation.

    • It's not directly rude, it's more like a serious tone of voice. But it only works like that when used unnecessarily, like in chat or IM where the message boundary styling doubles as a sentence boundary.

      Using the chat/IM style outside of that context just doesn't work and looks really odd, like it's obviously someone who didn't learn those norms and is now mimicking them without understanding them.

      3 replies →

  • Wow then I guess everyone finds me very rude. I capitalize, use correct grammar and spelling to the best of my ability in text messages just like any written communication. I find it rude when people don’t as I interpret it as they don’t even care enough about our communication to take the small effort to make their writing easy to comprehend and understand!

I hadn't considered that. My best guess is that it was originally an intentional decision based on consistency with nouns that people might have mid-sentence that they can't rely on autocorrect to capitalize properly.