Unpopular Opinion
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Guidelines:
Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
6. Defend your opinion
This is a bit of a mix of rules 4 and 5 to help foster higher quality posts. You are expected to defend your unpopular opinion in the post body. We don't expect a whole manifesto (please, no manifestos), but you should at least provide some details as to why you hold the position you do.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
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Capital letters give shape to lines of text on a page that make it easier for the eye to skim. Sure, they don't add any additional information that the period does not already have (and proper names are mostly vanity), but try reading page after page of all lower-case. It will take longer and comprehension will be lower. This is the same reason why some letters extend above and below the line - makes decoding words easier by giving them shape.
You can try it out yourself by saving this bookmarklet and using it to downcase a page! (Create new browser bookmark and paste "javascript:..." as the URL)
Come to think of it, the ease-of-read effect does look more pronounced on a full page of text rather than someplace where every post is a single sentence.
I appreciate the perspective, and I fully realize this hill I am dying on is not going to win hearts and minds. But you have to admit these problems have been solved in other ways without the extravagance of two mashed up writing systems. Even some forms of English like Morse code and ASL don’t bother with it (or can’t effectively bother with it) and it is fine. I think you are correct when you say vanity is the reason the convention now clings along.
Bonus thought: Punctuation at the beginning of a sentence like in Spanish should be codified across the globe.
asdf
I realize I am nowhere near influential enough. I am comfortable dying right here and now among all you lovely people.
asdf
By current conventions, one of those will be interpreted as aggressive and the other submissive, or unprofessional or something (at least within many common contexts).
I am that judgy too. For example, I just had an email with someone I work for this week and she used the word breech (which means poo) instead of breach (as in a contractual breach). And I took the rest of the day off to giggle.
asdf
ARGHGHAAGHAAHRRRGHAAHGH
No, one will be seen as aggressive and or uneducated the other as lazy and or uneducated.
No choice then. Odd letters of the alphabet gets capitalized, even letters get downcased. That way you need to learn only one glyph for each still, but nobody will interpret you as BDSM.