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Okay, so. In my continuing vain attempt to clear shit up that really should not be shit except that a) I am paranoid and b) someone is a chickenshit, I will do this.
In return, I want something.
Here it is. I will quit shouting in all-caps as much as possible at least until I forget that I ever said that or have so much rage that I would really like to reach through the screen and smack someone in the uvula, and in return, everyone can have their capital letters back.
Seriously, use capital letters. You're not being non-hierarchical, you're not being awesome, you're not made of bunnies, you look like an illiterate moron when you write fiction that fails to include capital letters. Why would I read something that you can't even be bothered to follow convention on presenting? How would I know that you understand, say, how to write? You don't, apparently.
I really pretty much don't include journal posts in this, because, well, if I can't read your post, I'm not going to, and I trust that if you can't read mine, you won't either. See? All fair. Also, a journal post is not something necessarily written for others to consume (though I would argue that the very definition of LJ is "someone else is consuming what you write") and what you do in your own home is, was, and always will be, different from what you do in public. I know everyone has a volume of Miss Manners lying around. Check me if you don't believe me. House rules =/= social rules.
But in fiction, you are communicating with someone, and the capital letter serves a valuable, valuable role. Not only does it indicate the beginning of a sentence in way that, um, anyone and everyone who has ever been in at least an American grade-school classroom should understand, it indicates a proper noun. It indicates something that you would like people to really, really pay attention to, and it is not fucking cute to decide that your job in life is to overthrow the hierarchical organisation of text by being all rebellious and shit and not using capital letters where appropriate (or where inappropriate, because frankly, I fucking love capital letters) because that renders whatever you have just spent a whole lot of time and thought on unreadable.
And you know what? I make the fucking rules on this one, buddy. I have no interest at all in consuming a work that someone can't even be fucking arsed to follow relatively standard rules on.
But aside from that there's this:
The point of writing is to communicate. That's it. That's all it does. You are communicating with someone, even if it is only yourself. There is absolutely no other purpose of writing. Even if you just do this: 3ghgzvhiqwgvjswbiohw that's communicating. (In that case, it is communicating that I am somewhat of an idiot, but there you go - you are now more informed via my writing.)
Communication is best achieved, at least in English and probably in most other languages, and I really don't want to get into an argument about Serbo-Croat or Basque or Laotian, by standardising as much as possible what things mean and how they are presented.
That includes capital letters, because they have meaning in the structure of a sentence.
The more you work on developing your own style and on following the rules, the more you get to bend them, but seriously, that's not one that's awesome to bend. (Nor is not using standard punctuation. I don't expect everyone to grasp the three legitimate uses of the colon, but you can - I promise - use quotation marks and live through the terror.) And it is not awesome to bend because you are not doing something stylistic, you're doing something to alter the readability of your work. If you want to do something stylistic, have 150 distinct points of view in your story. Go nuts on text effects (I frankly adore Alfred Bester for doing that.) or on plots or on povs or weird shit that occurs via words, but really - don't fuck with the words. You want people to read what you've written, I promise.
So here. Have some capital letters back. I give them to you freely - give them a good home, treat them well, and generally use them, because I promise - it increases your readability, and therefore your audience. And I have never, ever, ever, not even in conversation with Southern Baptist and/or Mormon women, understood why anyone would voluntarily marginalise themselves. Work within the system to be awesomely different. Surprise me with your work, with how cool it is, don't turn me off immediately by indicating that you don't know how to fucking write.
In return, I want something.
Here it is. I will quit shouting in all-caps as much as possible at least until I forget that I ever said that or have so much rage that I would really like to reach through the screen and smack someone in the uvula, and in return, everyone can have their capital letters back.
Seriously, use capital letters. You're not being non-hierarchical, you're not being awesome, you're not made of bunnies, you look like an illiterate moron when you write fiction that fails to include capital letters. Why would I read something that you can't even be bothered to follow convention on presenting? How would I know that you understand, say, how to write? You don't, apparently.
I really pretty much don't include journal posts in this, because, well, if I can't read your post, I'm not going to, and I trust that if you can't read mine, you won't either. See? All fair. Also, a journal post is not something necessarily written for others to consume (though I would argue that the very definition of LJ is "someone else is consuming what you write") and what you do in your own home is, was, and always will be, different from what you do in public. I know everyone has a volume of Miss Manners lying around. Check me if you don't believe me. House rules =/= social rules.
But in fiction, you are communicating with someone, and the capital letter serves a valuable, valuable role. Not only does it indicate the beginning of a sentence in way that, um, anyone and everyone who has ever been in at least an American grade-school classroom should understand, it indicates a proper noun. It indicates something that you would like people to really, really pay attention to, and it is not fucking cute to decide that your job in life is to overthrow the hierarchical organisation of text by being all rebellious and shit and not using capital letters where appropriate (or where inappropriate, because frankly, I fucking love capital letters) because that renders whatever you have just spent a whole lot of time and thought on unreadable.
And you know what? I make the fucking rules on this one, buddy. I have no interest at all in consuming a work that someone can't even be fucking arsed to follow relatively standard rules on.
But aside from that there's this:
The point of writing is to communicate. That's it. That's all it does. You are communicating with someone, even if it is only yourself. There is absolutely no other purpose of writing. Even if you just do this: 3ghgzvhiqwgvjswbiohw that's communicating. (In that case, it is communicating that I am somewhat of an idiot, but there you go - you are now more informed via my writing.)
Communication is best achieved, at least in English and probably in most other languages, and I really don't want to get into an argument about Serbo-Croat or Basque or Laotian, by standardising as much as possible what things mean and how they are presented.
That includes capital letters, because they have meaning in the structure of a sentence.
The more you work on developing your own style and on following the rules, the more you get to bend them, but seriously, that's not one that's awesome to bend. (Nor is not using standard punctuation. I don't expect everyone to grasp the three legitimate uses of the colon, but you can - I promise - use quotation marks and live through the terror.) And it is not awesome to bend because you are not doing something stylistic, you're doing something to alter the readability of your work. If you want to do something stylistic, have 150 distinct points of view in your story. Go nuts on text effects (I frankly adore Alfred Bester for doing that.) or on plots or on povs or weird shit that occurs via words, but really - don't fuck with the words. You want people to read what you've written, I promise.
So here. Have some capital letters back. I give them to you freely - give them a good home, treat them well, and generally use them, because I promise - it increases your readability, and therefore your audience. And I have never, ever, ever, not even in conversation with Southern Baptist and/or Mormon women, understood why anyone would voluntarily marginalise themselves. Work within the system to be awesomely different. Surprise me with your work, with how cool it is, don't turn me off immediately by indicating that you don't know how to fucking write.
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