OT: what's with the 'i'?

[Craig White]

On Fri, 2013-02-01 at 00:35 +0000, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> On Thu, 2013-01-31 at 13:44 -0700, Craig White wrote:
> > On Thu, 2013-01-31 at 15:07 -0500, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
> > > On 01/31/2013 12:52 PM, Frank Murphy wrote:
> > > > On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:55:08 +0000
> > > > Patrick O'Callaghan <pocallaghan at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > >> Way way OT:
> > > >>
> > > >> Just out of interest, why do some people use the non-existent word
> > > >> "i", not to mention other violations of capitalization rules when
> > > >> 1) their Shift key is clearly not broken,
> > > > Could be various reasons.
> > > > It's a multi-cultural list.
> > > > English as 2nd or 3rd language.
> > > > users may not have a western-style keyboard.
> > > > Maybe dyslexic (in rare case spell-check could complicate matters)
> > > 
> > > I **AM** dyslexic and live and die by my speel ckecher.
> > ----
> > my oldest brother is probably the smartest person I know - and he was
> > dyslexic too. He is also a graduate chemical engineer, former union
> > organizer, economics professor (masters degree) and it's obvious that
> > while spelling and grammar checkers are a must for people with these
> > problems, the truth is that it's about effective communication and I
> > don't have much patience for those who want to insist on rules of
> > communication rather than just appreciate the communication.
> 
> If it were either/or, I would agree with you, but that's a straw man and
> a false dichotomy. With the exception of dyslexics (who AFAIK tend to be
> of above-average intelligence), it's not a question of either you
> communicate effectively or you follow grammar rules. Grammar rules exist
> in order to make communication more effective by reducing the amount of
> cognitive dissonance.  Reading is not done letter by letter or word by
> word, but in larger units, and every time I see 'i' instead of 'I', it
> interrupts my train of comprehension, even for a a few milliseconds.
> What's good about that?
----
It's clear that you want this e-mail list, informal as it is to respect
your sense of proper grammar. It won't and your diatribes won't change
that but might scare people away.

My wife (Chinese - been here 2 1/2 years) speaks better English than
many Americans. Some people are lazy, sloppy and probably know better
but just don't care. Some people are dyslexic. Some are merely adopting
fast/informal methods of other communication methods. Some just simply
struggle with English. There's no straw man argument... but - if it makes
you happy, we can just declare the "Patrick O'Callaghan" rule by getting
it added to the Fedora Users Mailing List Guidelines so you have a fully
loaded weapon to attack with. Sheesh

Reminds me of a book that I bought that looked interesting... "Eats
Shoots & Leaves by Lynn Truss." It was about the need for things like
punctuation to clarify the intent of something. In the end, the author
includes a number of self adhesive commas, apostrophes, periods,
semi-colons and colons so one can fix the world's signage guerrilla
style. Yes, it's that absurd.

It doesn't matter.



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