Hi Phil,
I really appreciate your taking the time to bring this up; I was actually going to say something about it to you a couple of weeks ago, but I was busy and thought I might not be able to phrase what I wanted to say in an appropriate fashion.
At worst, the all lower case strikes me as a bit of an affectation -- sort of like Americans who cross their 7's in the European fashion, or guys who wear bow ties and "braces", just to be different.
What I don't understand is how you made the decision to eliminate caps, but didn't go all the way to the nuspeak that so many young people use in IM's and text messages. That would have saved you even more time -- and, to me at least, doesn't seem any more unconventional than lower case casing (or as it shall be forever known henceforth as LCC-ing, or maybe PS-ing... named after one of its greatest popularizers).
May I beg the list's patience with a little story?
I used to (this whole story is pre-Palm) keep my appointments in a Week-at-a-Glance style calendar that fit in my jacket pocket and also contained a personal phone book and a note pad. Then I took a tech job and found the little spaces for my appointments inadequate for the number of things I had to do every day, people to see, calls, emails, and etc. So being an efficient guy, I bought a bigger calendar book; one with spaces for every 15 minutes from 6 am to 10 pm. I figured if I kept better track of what I had to do, I'd be able to get more done.
Much to my surprise, I got a whole lot busier and efficient in keeping tabs on what I had to do, but started to feel like I wasn't getting the important things done. I could get greater numbers of things checked off my to-do list, but I was losing sight of my priorities.
Then one day, I lost the book. Holy crap, as Frank Barone would say, was I in a pickle.
In a rush, I got hold of one of my old-style Week-at-a-Glance books, just to tide me over till I could get a new big book. Lo and behold, I found that the small spaces forced me to decide what was important to write down. Doing that made me ask myself the question, every time before I made an entry, "Is this really the most important thing I can do in this period of time?"
After a couple of near car accidents from driving too fast to keep from being late (a hopeless endeavor if ever there was one) and missing a few of my daughter's once-in-a-lifetime performances in school plays and things like that, I came to realize (at least for me) that if the little boxes in my calendar book weren't big enough, it wasn't because I was being inefficient. Rather, it was because I was trying to do more things than it was really a good idea to try to accomplish.
By extension, I submit for your consideration that if you are so busy that you have to alter the way you express yourself in the English language, then maybe you're too busy for your own good and the situation is trying to tell you something.
I think the conventions of case, punctuation, grammar, etc. help us to be more expressive with language. It's kind of like a painter having more colors available on the pallette. Sure, the painter can strip her art down to just pencil sketches on paper, but in doing so, she loses the full range of expresssion available with the full-color pallette on canvas. Your stripped down language can be useful for getting across simple, and perhaps necessary communications (who, what, when, where, how, and why), but will probably not serve you well when wanting to convey style, nuance, personality, attitude, imagery, or mystery.
If you sent your grandmother a thank you note for your birthday present, would it be more meaningful to her to receive a hand-written note by postal mail, or an all lower case message by email? If your brother returned to you the set of pliers he borrowed last year, probably a simple utterance like, "You're welcome. What took you so long, bonehead?" would be sufficient. I guess choosing the mode and style of communication depends on the situation and the people involved.
So there you go, my 2 cents plain. That's my story and I'm sticking to it...
Sincerely,
Jim Lerman
Phil Shapiro wrote:
hi everyone -
a kind person within the DDN community sent me a friendly inquiry about my sending email in all lower-case. an explanation is owed -- and i'm open to going back to "conventional casing" if that works better for others.
i adopted the habit of typing in all lower case about 5 years ago when i was working a job in the arlington public schools. that job was plenty busy as i was managing 200 computers at 2 elementary schools, managing the networks at both schools, teaching the teachers before and after school every day, and taking care of any other technology need in the 2 buildings, including ordering and installing all hardware and software.
some journalist friends clued me in to all lower-case emails as a way to crank thru more emails per day. i find i can type about 25 percent faster without having to slow down for the shift key.
shortly after i was hired i needed to decide whether i'd send email in all lower-case to my boss, a very formal fellow. i thought about it for just a minute or two, and decided the job was hectic enough that i didn't have time for upper-case characters.
after i left 2.5 years later, they hired 2 full-time people to replace me. i think i made the right decision in my email style. i would have accomplished about 20 percent less work, as that job entailed sending a lot of email.
so in some ways i adopted the habit for the benefit of the children and teachers i was serving at those elementary schools. i'm willing to entertain going back to "conventional casing," but i might need to fit less into my day if i did.
- phil
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