Re: BANANAFISH digest 869
Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Sun, 21 Nov 1999 15:29:42 -0500
At 3:09 PM -0500 on 11/21/1999, you wrote:
>> This list is not here for you to change, it's here for you to contribute.
>> If your contributions are going to be telling us how immature and "stupid"
>> we are/can be, then you won't be a great asset.
>
> i don't know what you are talking about. i'm not here to try to change
> anything. i really don't care how you type. you act as if i want everyone
> else to stop using capital letters. i just feel that if i am going to take
> the time to type a response i should be given the credit due to anyone else
> who responds, no matter if i use capital letters or not. all i wanted to do
> was contribute to the list, nothing more.
This list is here for you to listen to, write to, or (if it suits
you) ignore entirely. By dint of your contributions, you may well
change it. Or may not. Only our future time together will tell us
that.
There is no minimum requirement regarding how you capitalize your words.
There is no grammatical checker that acts as a doorman.
There are, however, people on the list who dislike when people write
in lowercase. Scottie is one of them -- certainly the most vocal.
I'm not of the belief that there are two "tiers" of writing, one for
real-life and the other for online writing. I write the same way in
either context. If you do not, well, you may find yourself confusing
a reader, or you might get some kind of lecture, but please be
assured -- you and everyone else who has recently joined -- that
there is no law here about how you capitalize or construct your
sentences. I would like to think that you'd make them coherent
enough that the rest of us can read what you say, but in the end it's
your call to make.
I hope that this helps dissipate any hostile atmosphere of the sort
that periodically crops up here. (If I had time on my hands, I'd
like to create a graph that shows the patterns of fighting about
spelling, grammar, capitalization, and the like. It happens on a
regular cycle.)
A belated welcome to the list!
--tim o'connor