On 01/31/2013 12:17 PM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
On Thu, 2013-01-31 at 17:34 +0100, Andras Simon wrote:
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, and 2) they aren't the poet e.e. cummings? I've seen a number of people do this (admittedly a tiny minority) and never understood it. Do they think it's cool? Are they expressing their inner rebel? Were they punished by their English teacher at school? Is hitting Shift too much effort? Enquiring minds want to know.
I'd think it's the coolness thing. But highly intelligent people do it occasionally, so I have no clue either.
Yes, some of the Bell Labs people including none other than Ken Thompson were known for doing this, but ken gets a pass for obvious reasons :-)
poc
I believe I have read that English is the only language that capitalizes the first person. German capitalizes the second person formal, both singular and plural. (Sie.) I think Dutch also capitalizes the second person (U.)
--doug