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Author | Topic: General Discussion Of Moderation Procedures (aka 'The Whine List') | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined:
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oh, and Moose, my name is spelled with a lowercase "a". please endeavor to at least capitalize my name correctly if you're going to suspend me for capitalization.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
I don't especially mind, Percy, it's just that of I'm going to be suspended for picky issues like capitalization, the person doing it should at least try to get the capitalization of my username correct. We have a few members here who do not capitalize their usernames, for whatever reason. For instance, right now, bluegenes, dwise1, jar, and subbie are all online. None of them capitalize their names.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
bluegenes writes: He's distinctly irrelevant to the question of whether or not it's easier to distinguish between sentences on discussion boards when people capitalize their initial letters. would we be interested in discussing this question? personally, i find that capitalization slows down not only my typing, but also my reading. minuscules ("lower case") were originally designed to aid in both, as we can typically recognize minuscules by their counterforms alone. for instance, compare reading a block of text in majuscule:
quote: to that same text entirely in minuscule:
quote: which one reads faster, and is easier on the eyes? keep in mind that the original greek and latin alphabets are all majuscule, and minuscules developed over time through several stages (rustic, uncial, half-uncial, etc) with the specific intention of aiding scribes in reading and writing large blocks of text. personally, i find that punctuation and spacing is more than sufficient to distinguish the beginnings and endings of sentences (many languages such as ancient greek and hebrew lacked these as well, btw), and context generally sufficient to distinguish proper nouns. before the invention of minuscule scripts, context was the only way to distinguish between proper and improper nouns. even after the invention of minuscule scripts, all nouns (and some verbs and adjectives) were generally capitalized. i had sort of thought about putting together a new topic on this, going over the history of capitalization and whatnot, and a discussion about its relevance in a language that changes as fluidly as english -- and more importantly whether or not capitalization should be a suspendable offense. perhaps i will put it together when moose gets around to suspending me for this post.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
bluegenes writes: In other words, we're back to square one, and both of your examples are worse. if you hit "peek" on the above post, you can compare to a third example, the original text. the KJV bible i cited above capitalizes somewhat arbitrarily at the beginning of every verse regardless of punctuation or grammar. frequently, this results in a capital following a comma. this is somewhat representative of that period of english. earlier examples include frankly even more arbitrary capitalization schemes, often capitalizing the majority of the first letters. older still, capitalization is mostly absent, except for the first letter or any particular passage, similar to the way manuscript often illuminated the first letter. the modern system of capitalization wasn't locked in until roughly the 18th century. the interesting point is not that we have added capitals, but rather that since their addition, we have consistently done away with capitals, all but excluding the first letters of proper nouns, and the first letter of a sentence. the trend is not towards caps, but rather away from. removing them entirely is simply the next logical step. further, i find lack of capitalism not nearly as much of a deterrent to reading as i do poor post organization and line breaks. overly long paragraphs, or a bunch of short one-liners, do not scream "read this", and forgetting to add that extra space between paragraphs is even worse. for instance, many of the exceptional creationists PNTs here, copy-pastas, are generally quite unreadable thanks to poor formatting alone. correct capitalization cannot save them.
Are you sure you aren't over-intellectualizing your non-capitalization, when it might just be a simple case of "I can't be bothered to hit the shift key?" perhaps. but i did say as much in the above post -- i find it much faster to type this way. the potential drawback here is that i am much more prone to typographical error. but an advantage is that it becomes much easier to edit my text, as i can rearrange clauses essentially at will. however, for the record, i do in fact use my shift keys. when i type anything italic, for instance, i'm generally doing it in html (not bbcode), and the less-than and greater-than symbols require using a shift key.
On the lighter side, I just remembered an old joke about capitalizing proper nouns. It can occasionally make a difference, as in: "I helped my uncle Jack off a horse." "I helped my uncle jack off a horse." Not the best joke ever, but relevant. certainly. and it comes up sometimes in the scriptural debates. capitalization i mean, not jacking off a horse. as i mentioned above, even modern hebrew lacks any kind of case difference. the square aramaic script used in biblical hebrew developed from proto-semitic in the jewish scribal community much the same way capitalis rustica derived from the capitals script used for roman, well, capitals -- it was simply easier to write; more suited to ink and paper/papyrus/vellum. later scribes, like rashi, developed scripts much like the roman uncials, and used them to set their comments apart from the formal scriptural text. further, there is even a modern cursive handwritten script design for quick and fluid writing. i can personally confirm that it's far easier to write by hand. but the mixture of majuscule and minuscule scripts just never happened in hebrew, probably due to the lack of a tradition illuminating manuscripts. and so, even modern hebrew lacks case. this fact frequently comes up when discussing other gods, found in the old testament. the masoretic hebrew makes no distinction between the elohim in the "gods of canaan" and the elohim that refers to yahweh.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Adminnemooseus writes: I'm comparing your writing style/formatting to the modern English standard of having capital letters at sentence beginnings and at proper noun beginnings. i think it's important to understand that english is a fluid and changing language, that capitalization is one such factor that has changed and will continue to change. english also lacks a formal board of any type that determines the rules for the language; these decisions are based mostly on common practices. for instance, there are several grammatical rules that have changed drastically very recently. it's now almost entirely acceptable to end sentences with prepositions, and it's become common practice in the UK to leave periods outside of quotes when the period is not part of the quote.
By comparing it to archaic (eg. King James Bible) style/formatting? the KJV is not archaic in any way. it's only 400 years olds, and represents perhaps the most popular work in modern english. the english spoken at the time of shakespeare and king james is, for all intents and purposes, modern. archaic english looks like this: note the use of capitals. Edited by arachnophilia, : centered image
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Rrhain writes: But just barely. Have you not actually seen a copy of the original Shakespeare texts? yes!
There is no consistency in spelling. Some of it is because as a dramatic work, he used spellings that would assist the actor in their presentation ("sweet" spelled with three e's to indicate that it is an important word and the actor should hold that vowel sound out), but the English of the 1600s was just coming around to standardization. i think you will find that a wealth of alternative spellings still exist in english. for instance, i have a habit of typing "neighour" and "colour" and i use "theatre" to mean "a place where you see plays" and "theater" to mean "a place where you see films". i'm sure you can think of a myriad other examples if you really tried.
The "y" is actually a poorly written version of the Scandanavian letter commonly called "thorn" (). The graphology stuck and since type from Germany and Italy didn't have the thorn character (not being Scandanavian), English typesetters substituted the letter "y." If you look at 1611 copies of the KJV, you will see it (such as Job 1:9). indeed. although not typset, you will see it in the above example i posted of old english, a manuscript of beowulf.
But it has been many centuries since modern English was first solidified and it has adapted and changed since then. i agree. and it will continue to change. however, what we speak is significantly closer to shakespeare than it is to chaucer (middle english), or beowulf (old). and it has yet to change enough to warrant arbitrarily calling it anything else.
Every passing year makes it more and more difficult to understand what Shakespeare was writing. Not necessarily because of the topical references and turns of phrase but simply because the words don't mean the same thing anymore. They aren't pronounced the same way. this is a whine of poor students of shakespeare (and the bible). shakespeare (and the kjv bible) are much easier to understand than most people expect. and for shakespeare, especially when performed. it's modern english, just with some different vocabulary here and there, an alternate spelling or two, and some slightly different usages. you get more significant differences going from one colloquial dialect to another. compare "rubber" as used in america, canada, and england.
You aren't being hip or modern or arty or whatever sort of emotional tinge you have attached to your need to deviate from common useage. I'm sure it means something to you. no, it's just significantly easier to type, and for me to read.
It doesn't mean that to anybody else. Conventional forms exist in order to improve communication. Of course, conventions change, but the specific ones you are flaunting aren't among them. you might be surprised. the internet (especially twitter) is quickly changing the grammatical norms. perhaps this, to you, represents a perversion of the language -- but the invention of case usages was quite similar. note that the above old english example does not capitalize the first letter of a sentence, but does capitalize the entire first line, which happens to break in the middle of a word. capitalization here was strictly a stylistic concern, and not a grammatical one.
Here's a good example: A poem where the conventions of line breaks and punctuation have been removed: i understand the need for line breaks and punctuation, i assure you. it comes up rather frequently in the biblical debates, as the original hebrew bible was written without either, or spaces between words. meaning is sometimes confused in translations here. i am not arguing for doing away with that. or even capitalization. just that it's a bit silly to enforce something that is so historically subjective.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Jon writes: I feel that capitalization, like punctuation, is a reading cue that helps us find and keep our place in a text by marking certain references and transitions (important names and beginnings of sentences). interestingly, i find paragraph spacing much more important. mostly the space between paragraphs (which, ahem, if we're going to get all MLA here is also incorrect), but also the paragraph indents which this board does not allow. i find poorly spaced posts, especially those of the copy-pasta creationist convention, exceptionally difficult to read. but that's just me.
A 'properly-capped' post, unlike a properly-capped well, flows more easily for me. Content being equal, I'd find a post using English capitalization conventions more easy to understand than one which did not. However, I'd rather a good-content, no-cap post than a poor-content, capped post, so banning a brilliant person like yourself on account of not using capitals is just silly. You're worth reading regardless. thank you!
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Omnivorous writes: The word is "usage". Misspell it again, and I'll lobby for your suspension. ringo writes: I hesitate to be pedantic, with you of all people, but your usage of "flaunt" is nonstandard and technically incorrect. For maximum communicative power, you should use "flout". alright, alright guys, let's not get picky. i understood him perfectly fine -- which is just my point. we don't have to be perfect to communicate ideas sufficiently. and frankly, when dealing with issues like religion, i'd rather emphasize the imperfect in my own posts. Edited by arachnophilia, : double vision
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Adminnemooseus writes: The discussion certainly has shot off on a tangent that's getting rather remote from the moderation issue in question. Personally, I can't get too offended by that since I am seeing the various viewpoints as largely supporting my stance on the issue - As I see it, arachnophilia's arguments are pretty damn lame. perhaps. but i think the general consensus is that we shouldn't suspend members for poor grammatical habits. i probably will not have time to put together a comprehensive PNT tonight, though.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
It turns out that paragraph indents are remarkably easy. All you need is a little bit of HTML. oh, yes, i'm fairly fluent in html, but setting a style for each paragraph is a little frustrating and slow, and the board does not seem to allow the more universal "style" tag. and i don't blame you for blocking that one -- think of the amusing things one could do if you didn't. for instance, i could easily turn everyone's posts into all lowercase... Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
no no, it's an html thing. you can pop a text/css stylesheet into the actual code of a page (or import one), as opposed to manually styling every element. like so: HTML style tag
i don't think any board allows it, and for good reasons. your board allows far more html than most. Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
you can't have looked at too many forums, as i'm registered at quite a few.
bluegenes writes: They want period, space, space, capital. That's double your preferred period, space. well, as crash pointed out, that's not what "double spaced" means, but yes, that is part of standard MLA (i think?). i actually prefer it myself, and always have, but i've stopped typing that way since html doesn't allow it. it collapses all extra spaces in text. i'd literally have to add two extra non-breaking spaces at the end of each sentence, and i'm not going to do that when period-space is sufficient. MLA also does not like the extra blank line between paragraphs, which i believe that nearly everyone does here for the sake of clarity. Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
crashfrog writes: Unless Jon is writing papers in Courier, though, he shouldn't use two spaces after periods. i might have written a paper once in courier. i can't, for the life of me, remember why. i have also had at least one teacher at some point when i was in school who insisted on "period space space capital" which i only remember because i thought it was absurd at the time.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Jon writes: I use a typewriter quite often. and people think i'm weird for owning a turntable. in any case, in reference to the original sub-thread title, there's a very famous message board with a somewhat high percentage of lowercase posts. it just made the news recently, as members took down the webpages of visa, mastercard, and the government of sweden.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
bluegenes writes: This kind of thing didn't herald a revolution in formal written English. ... I think that Moose was being entirely reasonable if he requested that you capitalize before suspending you. i believe the pertinent question is whether a message board is an application of "formal written english", or more akin to "message sending, chat, tweeting etc". i would argue the latter.
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