[sushisource]

Not the deepest topic, but:

Can someone explain to me why there seems to be such a high correlation between being high on the totem pole and lazy bits of written word? In this case, Sam can't be assed to bother with capital letters. For other people, it's abbreviations or some other unnecessary bit of laziness. I don't get it. In my experience the higher up you are in management the more you do this sort of thing.

[kredd]

He’s not exactly in the age group, but quite a lot of young people have auto-capitalization disabled on their phone. Basically aesthetics.

At the end of the day, as time goes on, the methods of communications change as well. It does not exactly correlate one’s intelligence, intent, societal status or whatsoever. Prevalent use of emojis would be the simplest example.

[zuramai]

How could disabling auto-capitalization influence aesthetics?

[ra0x3]

i’ll bite.

it might sound dumb to you, but not capitalizing sentences properly amongst certain groups effectively means you’re not concerned with the optics of being viewed as someone who “doesn’t know grammar”.

it sort’ve displays a certain “I know proper grammar but I don’t really care to prove it to you”.

edit: and as others mention, it can be seen as less formal and friendly as well

don’t shoot the messenger :)

[nikodotio]

personally i just find this easier to read. capitalization breaks flow and parsing for me.

[throw0101b]

> capitalization breaks flow and parsing for me.

It can also break meaning though. Try de-capitalizing:

* I helped my Uncle Jack off a horse.

[dsgnr]

also: mobile autocorrect is garbage on so many devices its better to just turn it off. no one has time to shift case on mobile manually.

[jondwillis]

i turned it off on a whim, but this is the reason why i keep it off.

[syndacks]

less is more and tone is everything

[stranded22]

I’ve had a few company’s I’ve dealt with where the ceo writes: name hi,

And it really throws me - I’m spending hours ensuring my emails / communication covers all angles and then they reply with this salutation.

[chmod775]

Where I come from that means you can adopt a looser style as well, and don't need to bother writing formally with that person. It's considered "friendly".

In fact in German it would be really awkward if one person stuck to formal language when the other makes an attempt to be informal - sticking to it is like saying "keep your distance" and could be a little hurtful for the person who tried to be informal.

I'm curious how this is supposed to play out in English.

[upon_drumhead]

About 5 years ago, my CEO emailed me with something like 'yo! can you do me a favor'. Middle management was CCed on the email thread and when I responded something like 'Sure! Happy to help', I was chewed out by my director for being informal and thus disrespectful...

[jyunwai]

That is an excessive response by the director. I wonder if the CEO would have approved of the director's comment if you emailed an apology to the CEO, identifying that the director made the comment ("I apologize for the excessive informal language in my email, as noted by Director X; I look forward to completing the assignment."), as the CEO may have deliberately been trying to create an environment where seniors are more approachable.

In any case, I try to always write in full sentences for professional communications as a minimum (even if there are sprinkles of informal language)—I'm more comfortable writing this way at work, and it has the added benefit that it's hard for a third party to make a similar comment like you've experienced.

(At the other end, it can also be seen as too stiff and uncomfortable to be overly formal, even to supervisors. I've seen this where I had a direct report who was excessively formal at first. By encouraging him to open up and speak more openly, I believe that created a foundation for a more trusting work environment over time, which encouraged him to take more initiative and share his ideas when solving some problems that we were later facing as a team.)

[jyunwai]

A mismatch in formality is noticeable too in English, from my experience. It think it's a bit more subtle compared to other languages, as there is no formal "you" (in contrast to "du" versus Sie" in German, "tu" and "vous" in French, "tú" and "usted" in Spanish, "你" and "您" in Mandarin, and examples in other languages).

However, one difference in English is with greetings. If you are coworkers, especially at around the same age and seniority, it feels unnatural to say "Dear ___," versus "Hey ____" or "Hi ____" (experiences may vary based on organizational culture). It's noticeable with texting, too. If you were to use formal punctation and end all texts with a period (such as: "Hi." or "I'm fine."), the texts may be perceived as less friendly (in contrast to: "hi" or "no prob, it's all good").

I believe that informality in English communication is often a signal of how close the relationship is. Though some people speak with others with a high level of formality even in their close relationships (or alternatively, speak informally in nearly all contexts), a change over time from formality to informality is often a sign of growing closeness and trust. Long story short, this plays out the same as you've described the effect in English, at least for personal relationships.

For professional relationships, it depends on the person and the organization. I generally try to roughly mirror the level of formality of the person who I'm speaking with. However, if I'm reporting to a person with higher seniority than me, I do try to have at least a minimum level of formality. Even if a CEO were to send a text in a very friendly and informal way, I would try to be polite but at least semi-formal.

More explicitly, the Korean language makes the different possible levels of speech clearer. This source [1] identifies five to six levels of formality in Korean (Wikipedia identifies a higher seventh level reserved for historical dramas, addressing royalty, and religious texts). So, even if a coworker were to address me with the Korean equivalent of "plain" or "intimate" speech ("heya {name}", all in lower case), I've found it the most comfortable to respond in at least a familiar or polite way ("hey {Name}..." or "Hey {Name}"...).

That way, there is both a sense of respect and a sense that there is an attempt to match the person's level of familiarity. There is then less of a chance that a person might feel uneasy due to either too much familiarity or excessive formality on my part, which makes communications easier.

[1] https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Anthropology/Li...

[chmod775]

That was a more in-depth response than I could have possibly hoped for. Thank you!

[stranded22]

Very interesting take, thank you

[mr_mitm]

https://phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd072508s.gif

They're busy and they don't give a damn because they don't have to.

[justrealist]

There's some Picasso quote about like, you have to demonstrate you can follow the rules before you can break the rules.

Grammar and punctuation is a competence signal, but once you've demonstrated you can do it (by getting to the top) it's not necessary.

[rubyn00bie]

They're often very busy people responding to a LOT of messages/emails/things. It's better/easier to just write your thought and hit send because you actually get it done. If you think about it too much it really does slow you down. For important things, I'm sure they're all capable of writing with correct grammar but for things that are unimportant-- just mash the keys and hit send.

[gerdesj]

It looks very childish to me.

Capitalisation and punctuation provides a form and rhythm to written prose. When you scan (English) prose, your eyes very quickly pick up the start and end of a clause or sentence via the capitol letters and certain marks. English lacks nearly all accents and other "letter adjuster marks" that other languages enjoy. That generally means that when you see a mark of some sort in an English sentence it is a form of containment and not a change of sound.

That means we have a lot less sound adjusters, which means we end up with a lot more "local knowledge". A silly example: Slough and slough - the first is a town in Berkshire and the second is what snakes and crabs etc do to their skins/carapaces to grow to the next size.

That said, English is extraordinarily tolerant of pronunciation in most cases. You may not know the "correct" sound of a word but a bit of a dabble (try slightly different approaches) will get you there.

[thelittleone]

Reminds me of when drivers of expensive cars don't indicate when changing lanes.

[cedws]

Not "high on the totem pole" but I type like this on work chat because I want to get the message across quickly and punctation doesn't matter. For emails or other communications I always use proper punctuation.

[tennisflyi]

Because he has no scribe now - it’s real Sam. An architect drawn some chicken scratch on a napkin and others make it happen. Also, how is the prose in the Google emails from the trial?

This is the Guggenheim, https://architectelevator.com/architecture/famous-architects...

[asfarley]

Not needing to add padding is a form of status signaling

[postalrat]

I'd guess because they have nothing to prove.

[12ab3c]

I think it's an affectation more than anything else. For an educated person typing on devices with, at a minimum, autocorrect for capitalization, I think it has to be a conscious choice. The worst part of me says it is ego/arrogance played off as a casualness or being beyond triviality.

[tayo42]

> typing on devices with, at a minimum, autocorrect for capitalization,

posting from a windows laptop and Firefox, i get no autocorrect for grammar like capitalization. only firefox was detected as a work that needed to be capitalized.

[hackerbeat]

Agreed.

"Look, world, I care so little about being dumped, I don't even need to make an effort. Plus, I've got brains and more money than I can count."

Next level: Bond villain.

[postalrat]

Maybe if all his posts before today weren't all lowercase.

[hackerbeat]

That makes it even worse. So well-known and so much responsibility, yet so little care. If he can't even be professional when tweeting, why should we trust him with more? Probably good he's gone.

[behnamoh]

or maybe they know that using capital letters and such is just a convention that doesnt hinder understanding of text.

if you could read my comment then i've proven my point.

[squigz]

They arguably have more to prove than most people, since they're under much more constant scrutiny

[lostlogin]

And going with this, they use their time wisely, not to add punctuation to boilerplate tweets.

[enumjorge]

Trying to improve your efficiency by not capitalizing the words is like trying to get rich by not buying lattes.

[squigz]

Why waste time use lot word when few word do trick?

[DANmode]

Funny bit, no real-world nuance.

[squigz]

I'm not too sure what you mean here

[timeon]

why even tweet

[waynesonfire]

i think it's asking the wrong question. more interesting would be to understand how their style changed prior to becoming ceo.

[CamperBob2]

"what are ya gonna do, fire me? lol" - sama

[nabla9]

It's not uncommon practice that originates from newspapers.

Writing all low case is way to make sure that everybody understand the writing is just a draft, not ready for printing, or not final or official correspondence.

Editor could not just send it to press without proofreading and editing it.

[gerdesj]

I disagree. It is either simply lazy or (charitable interpretation) ... lazy.

No journo. or professional writer I know would ever forget to hit the shift key for some sort of weird "convenience". It is harder to write all lower case prose. Hit . + and you are primed to hold left shift for the next character with your left or right small finger (pinkie).

We humans mostly have five digits per hand. Even a single finger "poker" will manage to hit shift too, when appropriate.

Many years ago I used to teach a hand written correction markup used on manuscripts. Delta for delete, triple underline for change of case, the correct way to route clause moves etc. You put the change in the body and a symbol in the left margin for each change. To accommodate these changes you use 1.5 or double space inter line in your draft. You might also allow a slightly larger margin but that is generally optional and probably wasteful. The marginal indicator markers can be a bit "loose" - its hand written so an asterisk and a foot note is always an option for really tricky cases. When it gets too bad, the spike is the final home for the piece (or an open fire).

Your experience of journalism is rather different to mine.

[nabla9]

All low caps is faster if you need to write as fast as possible. Think news wire people reporting news like "three shots were fired at president kennedy's motorcade in downdown dallas". The old teletype machines had only one case anyway.

[gerdesj]

I'm 53. Morse and teletype were both well before my time - I did not have to engage with either directly. I recall that a "wire" was sent in all uppercase, with STOP for full stop/period.

My mother used a manual typewriter and then later golf ball etc. I did too. She and I were virtually incapable of not using shift. Smacking physical keys is rather satisfying and you tend to pause first before hitting them. Its a very different discipline to modern word processing. Worrying about case will come very low down the pecking order compared to speling (lol).

[atleastoptimal]

it's soft spokenness conveyed orthographically

[I_am_tiberius]

I guess this can be considered a Machine Learning question. At least I assume we can try to answer it using linear regression.

[pointlessone]

Jobs written well. The laziest he was is he never changed his email signature on his iPhone and iPad.

[thelazydogsback]

e.e. cummings was such as asshole :)

[goertzen]

It happens everywhere and with everyone. I wouldn’t read into it that much. Personally I find the lack of capitalism more sincere and I see everyone at every level on the totem do it.

[luigi23]

i just want to dump my thoughts on internet and indicate that im on the go. orthography adds extra layer of complexity and its already pretty tough for me to force myself to write aynwhere. adhd things. but yeah, its boomer artifact.

[hilux]

i see no such correlation

you have been misled by sample bias

people lower down in the org do the same or worse

basically under-35s view punctuation and speaking in complete sentences as boomer artefacts

not my choice just telling it like i see it

[solardev]

It's the same reason Zucky wears a hoodie and Musk smokes blunts on TV.

they dgaf :)

[rightbyte]

I don't know about Zuckerberg but Musk is a workaholic nanomanager. I am quite certain he do gaf. Like, the type that would relentlessly and unilaterally enforce no-tabs in the code base, no matter how many hours wasted.

[enumjorge]

I think it's less that they dgaf, and more that they are working really hard to create a personal brand of someone who dgaf.