Alex Balashov wrote: > Geraint Lee wrote: > > >> no conclusions seem to have been drawn from the original >> question/observation though! >> > > I was just about to say the same thing. > > >> and yes i have noticed random >> capitalisation in the past just ignored it and carried on with life, >> after all, it's not like it takes any meaning away from what's been written. >> > > Depending on who is doing the reading, it can communicate the impression > of an amateur, fly-by-night operation and negatively impact business. > > But that is beside the point of this thread; as I said to Jai, I am not > expressing an "opinion" here - plenty of other threads have seen that > already. > > What I do find surprising is that nobody has found this phenomenon > curious enough to raise the topic before. It's quite conspicuous, and > thus piques my curiosity. > >
To be perfectly honest, I think the consistency you've heretofore seen has been simply because of a consistency in its use by some writers common to the forum. Whether by misunderstanding or by simply a desire for visual emphasis (there is so little one can do to emphasise straight, unformatted text) of certain key words or terms that those writers feel to be important. I've seen somewhat random, and haphazard capitalisation from a variety of 'native' English speakers here in the US time and time again, and it often boils down to preference. It's often a learned affectation, in imitation of someone they've seen do the very same thing. I would find it incredibly difficult to believe that there's some standardisation of improper capitalisation that stems from former British colonies and their understanding of English. If public school taught me one thing it's that people who grow up in the UK and people who grow up in the US are by no means an adequate barometer of acceptable grammar, spelling, punctuation, or capitalisation. But then, having two English professors for parents, there were often great wars fought over the dinner table as to whether or not English should be a descriptive or a prescriptive language. I have a bad habit of subconsciously and immediately judging someone who uses poor grammar or spelling (in a manner consistent with a lack of understanding as opposed to simple typos), but if that were my only barometer for dealing with a company, there would be few companies with which I would bother dealing. My father, quick to defend the descriptive camp, would argue that such a thing goes against the idea of language, and that language itself is there for accepted communication. As long as both parties can agree that an idea has been conveyed properly and appropriately, the basic rules of grammar, spelling, punctuation, and capitalisation need not be as strict as I might want them. Some Asian languages have NO capitalisation whatsoever. Japanese, for instance, has no capitalisation or even spacing, preferring to rely on interspersed differentiation of syllabaries in order to break up a sentence into something meaningful. It's sometimes difficult to teach someone coming from such a tradition to understand why he sees random capitalisation on the Internet, in advertising copy, in newspapers, etc. Knowing this, I'm often somewhat lenient when I read what is written by non-native speakers, as I know the important part is to convey the information. If they're making an honest effort to convey information, they are, in essence, speaking the same language as I. It is readily apparent, however, when someone is NOT interested in making an effort to convey information. And those are the missives I find suspect. Those are the emails on the list that, to me, scream 'scam.' The emails from Jai, Rehan, and dozens of other non-native speakers that you occasionally blast for sounding poorly-written are, to me, completely acceptable in that I know that they're trying very hard to convey important information, and are both happy and eager to answer questions if I am confused about something they say. I neither begrudge them their capitalisation nor their grammar if there are mistakes. They often, of course, get defensive when you lambaste them publicly, but that's to be expected. I would do the same, I imagine, even if I didn't say so, I'd still FEEL unnecessarily chastised. On the flip side, there are those who drop in and just blast a quick, unintelligible spam, Google-translated from Chinese, Polish, Russian, Thai (or some other language that a computer translates VERY poorly), and then refuse to answer any questions about intent, often preferring to hide behind a shield of defensiveness. Those emails -- those are the ones which cause me to lose all faith in the company or product being offered. They say to me that if someone is not willing to at least try to be understood by me when selling me his product, he's certainly not going to bother if I end up having a problem with his product. N. _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- AstriCon 2009 - October 13 - 15 Phoenix, Arizona Register Now: http://www.astricon.net asterisk-biz mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-biz
