A Rose By Any Other Name is Just Plain Wrong

I'm spending most of my brain powers this weekend on negotiating a server transfer for my biz site, after I finalize the changes I made to the layout and CSS. I strangely enjoy doing stuff like that all in one fell swoop. It makes me feel tingly inside. ^_^ So before I go off on an orgasmic coding tangent, I wanted to take a moment to post here. Yes, I know it's Saturday (omg I'm blogging on a Saturday?!). And actually, it is really freaking early on a Saturday, compared to when I'm usually up. And I'm drinking coffee. God, this feels like a weekday! Anyway...

So I really like getting Makal's input on my various projects, online and off. Even after three years, the inner-workings of his brain continue to mystify me, so it is always intriguing to see what he has to say. Often when I make a post here that he likes, I hear about it pretty quickly, either as soon as it shows up in his feeds or once he gets home from work. So when he doesn't voluntarily comment, I'm inclined to ask. Apparently, this was not my week for blogging.

First off was Monday's post, about my rediscovery of Warren Ellis' book "Listener". No comment from the peanut gallery, so I decided to ask. "I didn't really like it." Well, why? "I dunno, I just didn't." Okay, I wasn't going to get any help there. S'okay though, it's not like he has to like all my posts or whatever; I just wish he could have given me better insight. Then there was Friday's all-lowercase post, best of luck to you on this special day. I heard about that one pretty quickly, but the reviews were't looking good.

"I will not accept your lack of capitalization." Wait, what? Come again? "It does not please me, I hate it when people write like that." Whoa whoa, hold on a minute there. By publishing one single, solitary post without capitalization--one which I specifically prefaced with "I don't care if you don't like this" so that people would know that if they told me they didn't like it, I wouldn't care--I was suddenly getting the most scathing review to date of my ability to write and engage an intelligent audience. Makal, as a person who is interested in writing as a career, was simply not going to abide by this lack of capitalization. For a minute I thought he was going to tell me to go back in and fix it!

I listened to what he said, and then I smiled and replied, "Well, I don't care what you think." To be fair, I did warn him, right? And I argued my case with him (well, you know, "discussed").

His Argument: "I don't like reading things that don't have capitalization."
My Retort: I like writing in all lowercase, and I don't care what he thinks.
Or what you think. Are you going to stop reading this blog if I started typing every post all-lowercase? Would you? Because if you would, please leave a comment or email me, as I'm very curious to hear more (honest). But like I said, it's something I used to do when I blogged for the sake of blogging, not for the comments or the link-backs or the page rank or the feed readers. And yes, I enjoy it. It's almost therapeutic to me, to eschew such a standard rule of writing--I'll get into that more more in a bit. Not only do I like it, but it is sometimes easier for me to write without caps. I can just type type type type to my little heart's content, never shifting a pinky finger and accidentally hitting the capslock key or capitalizing the first two letters of a word instead of just one. I hate that. PLUS, the more from-scratch coding I do (which let's face it, is all of the coding I do) the more my brain just thinks in lowercase. Besides, I usually try to capitalize proper nouns (titles, names, etc.) even if I don't start my sentences with a capital letter.

His Argument: "You am contributing to the delinquency of the Internet by not using propers capitalization."
My Retort: It's not my fault they're idiots.
Seriously, it's not. I am not going to be blamed for an entire generation/culture of people who are capable of even thinking that submitting school reports in chat lingo is okay. It's a utilization of a lexicon that I personally do not accept. It is NOT my fault these people are bastardizing the English language... yet simultaneously, I do not necessarily think it is bad that such a thing is happening. Language is meant to evolve so that it better serves the needs of the people who speak it. Not that that's an excuse for the outrageously incompetent people out there who can't write with proper spelling and/or grammar. Those people aren't going to be reading this blog anyway. And if they do, well, they should manage without caps just fine.

His Argument: "I can't read anything that does not adhere to proper writing techniques. " (grammar, punctuation, formatting, etc.)
My Closing Argument: you have to show that you know the rules before you can break them.
One of my all-time favourite posts by Susannah Bresline, titled "Grand Theft Are You Fucking Kidding Me?", was something Makal thought was rubbish, merely because it was not formatted into smaller paragraphs to make the reading more cohesive. He said he would never read her blog if that's the way she writes; I pointed out that she's one of the most prolific and sought-after writers on sex and current events we (this country/world/Internet) have right now, and has been published by well over a dozen various organizations. She doesn't need to care about "perfect formatting" because the woman is smart and knows exactly what she's doing. Nobody is going to write her and say "I was astounded by the purely illiterate post you made on the new GTA game; how dare someone like you call yourself a writer!" No, that's just not going to happen. And if it does, no one will take that person seriously.

I am an OCPD-perfectionist, and a grammar nazi to boot. I find myself correcting people's grammar and phraseology at even the most awkward times, and I mentally kick myself for it when I do. It's never that I think the person is stupid and that's why I'm correcting them. It's just that... well, what they're saying is wrong, and since I know they're not stupid I want them to know the correct way to say/write something (so that nobody else will think they are stupid). It's kind of a roundabout justification, but I am a geek and it makes sense to me. In other words, nobody who knows me is going to question my knowledge of proper formatting and grammar, unless what I say is supremely stupid (and then I will laugh and thank them, which is known to happen). And even if my writing isn't always a spectacular display of wit and vernacular, I still know that I've got an entire k-12 educational career of advanced-placement writing classes, and received awards at all levels from various organizations (school, state, and national) for my skill. Yes I am going to play that "I was good at this in school" card.

I had this IM conversation with a friend earlier this year:

me: yeah, i imagine you're comp is much better spec'd than mine
me: arg, i am so messing up my yours and you'res
tb: it happens
tb: i know you know the difference
me: lol, thanks
me: i just dislike when i notice a pattern
tb: it's kind of funny, but grammar, spelling, and usage are the first things i notice about a person
tb: you passed the test :)
me: weee!
me: although i am frequently too lazy to capitalize during an IM conversation
me: but at least i can type whole words! :D
me: nun o dis stuf
tb: i'm totally ok with no capitalization. if e.e. cummings can get away with it, so can we
me: haha, good point!

And yes, it was a good point, and fit well into my discussion with Makal of the rules of writing. You can't really go saying cummings was not a skilled poet or author just because he didn't capitalize "correctly". When you're writing from your heart, who's to say what is correct?