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bluepeter 2 hours ago [-]
British aristocracy has been pronouncing their own surnames wrong for centuries on purpose. Cholmondeley is "Chumley" Featherstonehaugh is "Fanshaw." If you read it phonetically you mark yourself as an outsider. The misstake is the membership card. (Heck, even in Portland we locals hear about misprouncing Couch St probably every year in local press as some bar for membership to our own locals only vibe.)
radpanda 25 minutes ago [-]
I don't really see that as the same thing as what the article was pointing out. Those are shibboleths that only an insider would know. You have to get the pronunciation of Cholmondeley or Couch "right" to pass for an insider.
The random misspellings, missing spaces, sloppy grammar, etc in the examples in the article seem different to me. Misspelling "en route" as "enriewu" doesn't show, "look, I know the secret country club spelling for en route". It simply shows that you don't have to care about your mistakes. You write something that approximates what you mean, and you're too important to spend time revising. The mistake could be "enrout" or "n route" or on any other word. But you're not going to be a try-hard who edits and frets over their messages, you're blessing someone with 10 seconds of your attention and they're lucky to receive your correspondence, typos and all.
Same as Texans asking where Houston Street is in NYC.
woopwoop 21 minutes ago [-]
But Houston Street is older than Sam Houston, and was always pronounced that way.
teachrdan 2 hours ago [-]
There's also the British penchant for deliberately mispronouncing French words. I have heard "renaissance" pronounced "reh-NAY-sance", "fillet" pronounced "fill-it", "valet" as "val-it" and so on. I think it's a national point of pride to pronounce the words of their neighbor incorrectly.
OJFord 5 minutes ago [-]
Those are the standard British pronunciations, if you meant 'I have heard' as though it might be a niche or occasional occurrence. ('fill-ay' et al. are AmE pronunciations.)
It's not always that way though, consider 'niche': it's AmE that decided it's 'nitch'!
bloak 1 hours ago [-]
"Valet" and "cadet" is an interesting pair: they rhyme in French (/va.lɛ/ and /ka.dɛ/), but rhyming them in English would be ... unusual.
If there were just French words pronounced in a French way and English words which came from French and are now pronounced in an English way that would be bad enough but in fact we have a whole spectrum of bastardisation.
jpfromlondon 2 hours ago [-]
America is at least as guilty of mispronouncing non-english words it's just natural drift.
As to fillet and valet, they joined english before the contemporary french pronunciation, and are much closer to the middle-french.
rkomorn 42 minutes ago [-]
I'm always amused by some mispronunciations that stray farther away from the original than necessary.
My favorite is probably crepe, which Americans pronounce like an almost diphthong-y craype (or crape like grape I guess) when crep (like step) would do just fine and be closer to the original.
But as a native French and basically-native American speaker, I also couldn't really care less about it, or about things like Americans pronouncing the t in croissant, or French people being unable to say the.
djeastm 41 minutes ago [-]
>America is at least as guilty of mispronouncing non-english words it's just natural drift.
See also: Cairo, IL or Versailles, KY...
tigerlily 3 minutes ago [-]
Notre Dame, IN
teachrdan 17 minutes ago [-]
Is the Illinois one the same pronunciation as "KAY-ro", Georgia?
Yep. And try "lieutenant" or "herb" on for size. (Edit: I guess "herb" is a bit of a complex one... originally from Latin's "herba" where the H was pronounced, but from UK it came most immediately from French's "herbe" with no H sound. So UK did somehow shortcut back to a more original sound.)
fy20 1 hours ago [-]
As a Brit, my understanding of the American pronunciation was from Italian immigrants in the US.
dfedbeef 51 minutes ago [-]
Oybs
mattmanser 31 minutes ago [-]
So this isn't the British being deliberate obtuse, foreigners pronounce English words wrong all the time and we don't accuse them of doing it on purpose. They do it because that's how they would pronounce those words in their language.
Fillet/valet are mis-pronounced because of mallet, pallet, etc. Renaissance? Nail, snail, tail, etc.
It really is that simple, we're just pronouncing them as if they were an English word.
FpUser 42 minutes ago [-]
Here in Toronto area city of Vaughan pronounced as (/vɔːn/ or /vɑːn/) like in "dawn" or "gone"
Imaging me fresh from USSR asking someone how do I get to ... and getting blank stare
3 minutes ago [-]
bluepeter 35 minutes ago [-]
That's great. What's also amusing is how you felt it necessary to provide the diacritical pronunciation guide for "Vaughan"... because I think to most native English speakers we can't imagine any other pronunciation!
FpUser 12 minutes ago [-]
I think native English speaker who had never heard of Vaughan (sure we can find some of those) would likely to pronounce it like "Vog-un" - /ˈvɒɡən/ or "Vog-han" - /ˈvɑːɡən/
b40d-48b2-979e 7 minutes ago [-]
No, I don't think they would. I've never heard of Vaughan and assumed one syllable like the parent commenter.
SoftTalker 9 minutes ago [-]
No, "gh" is usually silent in English spelling.
stackghost 1 hours ago [-]
>Cholmondeley is "Chumley" Featherstonehaugh is "Fanshaw." If you read it phonetically you mark yourself as an outsider.
This is a monstrous crime against language.
howlingfantods 2 hours ago [-]
Grammar at its best promotes clear communication but more often is used as a social tool of control and exclusion. When you are already talking to people within your in-group, that impulse isn’t necessary.
ekjhgkejhgk 24 minutes ago [-]
The flip side is that my exclusion of others is often other's exclusion of me.
When someone says "aks" instead of "ask", they know what they're doing. They look around and think "I am like those who say aks, so I will say aks too. Those who say ask are outsiders". So I response: Ok, you're an outside to me then.
Approaching like "they can't speak properly and we're evil for excluding them" is patronising and racist.
PaulHoule 2 hours ago [-]
On some level. Thing is it is visible and everybody knows what the standards are, social mobility is possible under the sign of grammar.
If the game is wearing a $20k watch or understanding the covert signs of status that you might find in a particular community, that's something different.
mmooss 2 hours ago [-]
This could be read as a condemnation of the text input interfaces we've designed; the users are busy and have little choice. Typing on a phone still is awful:
* Very time-consuming, especially for edits/corrections
* Lacks functionality (where is undo? the right/left arrow keys?) and other functionality is very poor (mouse/pointer control)
* Frustrating!
* Consumes attention: I can type on a full keyboard while looking elsewhere - including talking to someone else, though of course all actions suffer. On full keyboards I can type while reading something, to transcribe it, or I can just watch the output. Or just imagine using keyboard-based commands (e.g., Vim) on a smartphone.
I've tried alternative screen keyboards and they are a bit better, but it still sucks a lot.
mrob 1 hours ago [-]
Doing anything on a phone is a miserable experience, even compared to using a laptop, which is already a lot worse than a desktop with good input devices. IMO it's shocking how many professionals are willing to tolerate such bad interfaces. Compare how picky professional musicians are about the exact components and setups of their instruments. No amount of convenience should lure you into accepting touch screens.
bluGill 1 hours ago [-]
touch screen phones are a useful compromise. If I'm going to write a lot I want a real keyboard and large monitor with all the features thereof. However often I just need a quick note and I'm not in the office. I would not carry a desktop computer to the airport (I'm old enough to remember the IBM XT luggable computer - built in CRT monitor, not battery: it was portable, but it was a real workout). A laptop is sometimes useful, and it isn't too bad to have one in a backpack, but it is still big and so won't be with you. A phone is the correct size of have in your pocket so you can "do something" while "the refs try to figure out which rule applies to this play".
Phones will always be miserable - but they are the least miserable option in a lot of situations and so I expect people to use them a lot just because the other tools are even worse.
mmooss 43 minutes ago [-]
Phones (really, the pocket/handheld form factor) are a necessity and are limited; I agree. We could deliver better text input interfaces for them.
For heavy typers, physical keyboards in candybar phones (.e.g, old Blackberrys, etc.) and landscape-oriented clamshells fix many issues, but those are outre for some reason. Even on-screen UIs could be better. Just arrow keys to move to the cursor precisely would be a signficant improvement.
surgical_fire 9 minutes ago [-]
I think the blackberry I had before the current trend of full touchscreen smartphones was the only cellphone I ever enjoyed using for the device itself.
everdrive 2 hours ago [-]
>Typing on a phone still is awful
I use a bluetooth keyboard for typing on my phone unless I'm out in the world. The number of people who want to have long-form conversations through a phone interface is shocking to me since it's such an awful experience and there are so, so many available alternatives.
bluGill 60 minutes ago [-]
I do that a lot. My phone doesn't have spellcheck though - it assumes I'm using a keyboard with autocorrect.
2 hours ago [-]
ryandrake 2 hours ago [-]
I think a more likely reason, that for some reason, a lot of people don't want to talk about, is that these "Global Elite" aren't really that smart, creative, or articulate. That they've gotten to where they are despite, not because of their communication skills. They're not being "typical unconventional / quirky entrepreneurs." They're simply C students who knew the right people.
AdamN 1 hours ago [-]
There's some of that but I remember 15 years ago this investor in our startup emailed the founder and misspelled the name of the startup that they had just pumped a significant amount of money into :-)
The founders said it was very 'senior' of him and laughed about it. But it's also kind of indicative of seniority because senior people aren't wasting time looking up the correct spelling of a company name - they get the email out with the salient details with the right amount of time invested into it. You want to be dialed in but also if you're doing lots of stuff at scale it doesn't really matter what the name of the startup is. Ideally you did the right diligence before the decision to invest was made but then at that point only a few key things matter and are worth keeping in hot memory any more - things like where the founders went to college (in case it helps with a future connection), what the market is (in case it helps with a future connection), what they need help with (in case it can be brought up with a connection), etc...
snikeris 1 hours ago [-]
Taking the time to craft a well-formed message requires a degree of empathy. The golden rule suggests that we write messages in a way that dignifies the recipient. The Global Elite may lack these traits and sensibilities.
DangitBobby 27 minutes ago [-]
Same reason we all still wear suits I guess.
dathinab 50 minutes ago [-]
this isn't wrong
but spelling and grammar still isn't a good indicator for expertise, intelligence or anything like that even in an academic context
Mainly:
1. Dyslexia doesn't make you dump, just likely to misspell and a less likely to notice your misspelling.
2. When speaking about neurodivergence people mainly think about Autism or ADHD but sometimes just mean that your brain thinks in very different patters, this can make grammar hard. Especially if it's not your native language.
3. Sometimes people had shitty situations earlier in their live, leading to incorrectly learning parts of languages. This is hard to fix. But isn't really representative in any way for their expertise in any topic which isn't the given languages grammar.
4. English grammar and pronunciation to spelling mapping aren't exactly well designed. People not wanting to bother with it is not really related to intelligence, or excellence in other topics.
5. Some kinds of expertise are unrelated to general intelligence, expertise, education. So even if spelling and grammar where related to intelligence, it wouldn't be meaningful to judge expertise.
ryandrake 6 minutes ago [-]
I think the grammar/spelling is just one (perhaps low-signal) sign. But a lot of these people really are not that intelligent. And not just the GlobalElite™. Think of the guy who owns the local car dealership or owns 20 laundromats in the surrounding 3 counties. These guys are not geniuses, either. They just happen to own things that make them rich.
I worked with a tech founder at one point in my life, and I once happened to get a glance at his undergrad college transcripts which were, for reasons unknown, just sitting out on his desk. It was all Ds and Cs. He barely graduated! Yet his networth was more than the combined net worth of all of his employees.
philipwhiuk 43 minutes ago [-]
Trying to decide whether the mistakes in your response are deliberate or accidental.
aduty 21 minutes ago [-]
Pretty grate either way.
2 hours ago [-]
RamblingCTO 2 hours ago [-]
or efficiency is more important because you have a high load of people you need to interact with. I was a grammer nazi back in the day but stopped caring because the ROI is minimal and I've got shit to do that's more important. so maybe it's the same for them
ryandrake 1 hours ago [-]
I've never understood the "efficiency / ROI" argument. What is the "Investment"? What's the time delta between using the shift key and not using the shift key? Does it even add up to one second per year? What's the accumulated time loss from spelling "grammar" properly?
If the delta is simply "cognitive load" then we're back to the theory I already posted.
jordanb 2 hours ago [-]
They're willing to boil the oceans to write better emails and, alternately, not have to read emails others have sent. So I don't think it's a lack of desire. I suspect it's more atrophying of ability to put effort into anything.
RamblingCTO 1 hours ago [-]
maybe. maybe they just stopped caring what others think or something
mihaic 2 hours ago [-]
By your logic, you didn't put in much effort into your message. Besides not capitalizing the first letter of every sentence, everything else looks great though for me, and I'd imagine it was low effort for you. Those messages between billionaire read like the worst texts from low IQ teenagers.
mrec 1 hours ago [-]
I dunno, misspelling "grammar" as "grammer" isn't a great look in context.
RamblingCTO 1 hours ago [-]
you should get me on my iphone since the new auto correct fucks up my bad writing even more
maldev 2 hours ago [-]
I think you're right. Only people trying to look up care about appearances, a millionaire CEO will reply with "sounds good - Sent From Outlook for Iphone", while the intern will write a full thesis level reply on why they need pto.
hshdhdhj4444 2 hours ago [-]
You’re right.
Gotta be really incredibly efficient while planning your time on Epstein Island doing Epstein Class things to Epstein girls.
These world changing guys clearly have no spare time on their hands at all.
cindyllm 1 hours ago [-]
[dead]
jordanb 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah and it's really interesting watching people try to come up with alternate explanations. The people who rule us can't be this mid, otherwise the very concept of meritocracy is bunk.
Or at the very least, the things we tell ourselves are meritorious are not what actually what causes people to rise to the top of our society.
By the way I'm also astonished by their lack of taste. The Epstein properties give off a sinister vibe as one would expect, but watching -- for instance -- Architectural Digest videos you get the impression that either the property has been professionally staged with pottery barn/cb2 esthetic or it was decorated with painting-of-dogs-playing-poker levels of sophistication.
Not surprising I guess but you'd think someone with essentially unlimited budget who has complete dominion over their own time wouldn't end up living in an enormous, expensive, alienating ugg boot.
stackghost 1 hours ago [-]
>The people who rule us can't be this mid, otherwise the very concept of meritocracy is bunk.
It is bunk. Nobody who has even a modicum of critical thinking ability thinks that Donald Trump or Elon Musk are geniuses.
Luck and circumstance are an immense part of success.
vardalab 1 hours ago [-]
Exactly. Look at just the most recent conflict in Middle East. You think they would have freaking gamed out potential scenarios using AI or whatnot? Looks like nobody gamed out anything. It's all just seat of the pants.
otterley 35 minutes ago [-]
The military has performed countless simulations and “what-if” exercises and thoroughly documented each one. They knew a war with Iran without boots on the ground doesn’t end with a decisive victory. Trump chose to ignore them and press ahead anyway.
You can’t really understand Trump’s decisions unless you understand that despite all evidence to the contrary, Trump himself truly believes he is the smartest person in the room, regardless of who else is in it; and he will not suffer anyone who dares to contradict him.
ryandrake 1 hours ago [-]
I truly believe this is it. People don't want to openly admit how dumb these Global Elite actually are, because it totally shatters the illusion that there's even a tiny shred of meritocracy in the world.
41 minutes ago [-]
hax0ron3 2 hours ago [-]
That may be the case. Also, a man's intelligence is usually not evenly distributed among all of his different psychological facets. One can be extremely smart in some ways and extremely incompetent in other ways. So some of the global elite might actually be extremely smart when it comes to a few key things and total morons in other ways.
If your theory is correct and the global elite really isn't significantly smarter than the average population then the next question is, how are they maintaining their spots against smarter competitors?
UncleMeat 51 minutes ago [-]
> If your theory is correct and the global elite really isn't significantly smarter than the average population then the next question is, how are they maintaining their spots against smarter competitors?
This question is only difficult to answer if we believe that our system operates on merit. A system that operates on power, connections, and backroom favors happily maintains the status of mediocre people.
joe_mamba 2 hours ago [-]
>how are they maintaining their spots against smarter competitors?
You need to be intelligent at these, above all else.
hax0ron3 46 minutes ago [-]
Well, then the theory that they are stupid is false, since at the least they are very smart at blackmail, lying, cunning, manipulation, backstabbing, machiavellianism, etc.
joe_mamba 41 minutes ago [-]
Yep. They're stupid at what the general public considers intelligence, generally academic excellence. But they're smart at doing whatever it takes to get to the top.
mmooss 2 hours ago [-]
I generally agree in that I don't see them as particularly brilliant, though I think the average is higher and there is a much higher minimum in some capabilities.
And corruption of power is the cause, I suspect. It has poisoned human minds in all places and times; none of us are immune (which is why we design governments that limit individual power). An early lesson in being in charge was that, having nobody to whom I reported, who would see my work and compel me to a high standard, I let things slip.
Reportees rarely help you: Often they don't know what you do; when they do see it, they assume it's acceptable - you know what you want, and you set the standard of quality and establish the norms. Generally they have obvious disincentives against disapproving of you, and not just as some political tactic but for personal comfort: days are much more pleasant if your boss is friendly. They will give positive or at least non-negative responses to most substandard boss work.
I had to learn to think of it in two ways: First, would I accept this work from someone reporting to me? Second, I internalized the medium- and long-term consequences of substandard leadership and management: once your organization has caught that disease, once that's your reputation, it's very hard to change.
joe_mamba 2 hours ago [-]
>That they've gotten to where they are despite, not because of their communication skills
Reminds me how I double and triple check the emails I sent out to the higher ups in the company to make sure spelling and language tone was good, while in his emails Epstein was like "wazzup retards, kiddie fiddling party at my place" and getting replies from 3 world leaders and 5 CEOs. Then him and Israel's' former PM were both struggling to spell PALANTIR over the phone. It's a big club and you're not in it.
jordanb 1 hours ago [-]
Neither of them could pronounce "palantir" let alone spell it. And they were talking about becoming board members.
rickcarlino 2 hours ago [-]
Nothing says “I’m not AI” like a complete disregard for capitalization and grammar. It’s the ultimate authenticity signal in 2026.
normanthreep 1 hours ago [-]
Yeah of all my HN and reddit bots those who are prompted to produce bad grammar are the most successful
people love talking to them
blast 1 hours ago [-]
This trend predates LLMS though.
bpodgursky 2 hours ago [-]
yes ths is the obvvious reason
throw_rust 2 hours ago [-]
It's a lace-curtain thing to actually spell things properly, actual upstairs people don't give a toss thereabout.
1 hours ago [-]
redwood 2 hours ago [-]
It's just that this is how everyone types when typing quickly in a text message on their phone. Not much to see here
next_xibalba 27 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, I think this is the real answer here, not the elaborate social signaling/insider conspiracy takes. These are people who are communicating non-stop and are mostly are boomers who did not grow up on keyboards.
potsandpans 59 minutes ago [-]
nowadays, if you have correct spelling and grammar people accuse you of being an llm.
djeastm 39 minutes ago [-]
I don't find this at all. There's a certain style, or flourish, to LLM-ish writing that makes it noticeable. It's not just spelling and grammar.
RandallBrown 44 minutes ago [-]
I end all of my sentences with periods and I was told that I have a negative attitude at work because of it. Seriously, my manager's advice was to stop ending my sentences with periods.
0cf8612b2e1e 11 minutes ago [-]
In lieu of exclamation points? Or just run on chains of thought?
That's just how busy people type. You see it a lot if you communicate with upper managers/Csuite regularly. They don't have anyone to impress in private emails, as long as the message is communicated well enough. Before smartphones/autocorrect/dictation it was worse.
TYPE_FASTER 2 hours ago [-]
> Before smartphones/autocorrect/dictation it was worse.
Not sure I agree. I remember e-mails being capitalized and punctuated.
It's not so much typos and laziness as much as incomplete thoughts and distraction. Communication as a whole has devolved from an e-mail with a complete thought and some details to a text or chat message without capitalization, punctuation or context.
The lack of capitalization and punctuation are just a tell to me that the sender didn't put thought into it.
I can't tell you how many times I get a chat message asking a question. I in return ask questions about context, and explain why I'm asking. Then the original sender gets annoyed and provides context. Then I ask more questions. Then the original sender gets quiet. Then I get an invite to a meeting to discuss with a wider audience.
kstrauser 2 hours ago [-]
I think you're right. I've gone back and read some of my own posts here and winced at what the combination of one-handed typing as I hold onto a handrail on a packed subway plus autocorrect did to what I thought I was saying.
I make an effort to use correct spelling and grammar in everything I write that's longer than "ok i'll check when at office", but sometimes it slips past. People still seem to understand what I'm telling them, though, and that's the ultimate goal.
triceratops 2 hours ago [-]
> Before smartphones/autocorrect/dictation it was worse.
Ima call bullshit on this. Read the published letters of some historical figures.
kristjansson 2 hours ago [-]
Activation energy of a letter vs. an email. If you have to handwrite it and it takes ~days to arrive, you write fewer communiques and put more into the ones you do, but a lot goes unsaid.
You see it start to change with the telegraph on down to where we are today.
ASalazarMX 32 minutes ago [-]
> You see it start to change with the telegraph on down to where we are today.
Telegrams were paid by the word, and were all uppercase by design, they're not an evolution of language. It took more effort to adapt your message to a telegram than to write a proper sentence.
kstrauser 2 hours ago [-]
Survivorship bias. You don't often read the notes where Thomas Jefferson jotted "hey martha riding to ftore be back later love you - Tommy".
SoftTalker 2 hours ago [-]
Not so sure. After my father died I came across a box of old letters that were sent between he and his friends, from their early college years. Just personal, casual correspondence, which today would be done with a messaging app or email. Even on the short notes, the structure, spelling, grammar, and even the penmanship is excellent compared to what I see people of the same age doing today.
kstrauser 2 hours ago [-]
You had to dedicate so many more resources to that, though. Mailing a letter requires gathering up paper, a pen, an envelope, a stamp, and the person's address, then physically transporting it to a mailbox. It also has a lot of inherent latency, so you have to pack a lot of content into the message because it'll take as much effort into clarifying something you left out on the first message. It's natural to put more care into something you've invested that much baseline effort into.
I wouldn't spend nearly as much effort on something ephemeral and instant. For instance, I'm not going to mail my sister in another state a letter saying "ok thanks". I very while might text her that, because 1) she knows exactly what I'm referring to — the thing we were talking about 11 seconds earlier; 2) the customs of messaging mean she doesn't expect or want a wall of text; and 3) if she has any more questions, she can ask them and I'll reply within a minute or two.
YinglingHeavy 2 hours ago [-]
I call bullshit on you comparing what was obviously a 2000s+ phenomenon with that of closer to the 1800s.
triceratops 2 hours ago [-]
I didn't say 1800s. But also I thought "dictation" meant via a secretary. I guess they meant by voice recognition.
overtone1000 2 hours ago [-]
I thought the same.
"Dictated but not read."
mmooss 2 hours ago [-]
> That's just how busy people type. You see it a lot if you communicate with upper managers/Csuite regularly. They don't have anyone to impress in private emails, as long as the message is communicated well enough.
There is a time pressure to communicate this way, but I think it's generally a management mistake:
Managment includes leadership (usually). Your messages are most of what most people in the organization see of you. You set the high bar; nobody will prioritize quality and attention to detail more than you. And that standard is global IME - you can't very effectively set the example that messages can be sloppy but nothing else.
For messages to my social inner circle, for example, I am much less careful - misspellings, abbreviations, etc. For messages to people I manage or lead, I make sure it's perfect every time.
bluGill 1 hours ago [-]
Messages from the CEO to the whole company should be carefully checked, and in my experience they seem to be. Spelling/grammar is just a tiny part of check, there is also the whole inclusive language/not offensive to anyone set of checks, and the is this even legal check (perhaps more, that is what I can think of offhand).
Messages to a single vice president get much less care.
mmooss 37 minutes ago [-]
I agree that's the reality, but that VP will follow your example - as a leader, excellence is a performance, a superficial presentation for others, not something to do in private. Also, it's normal to not take your reportees seriously (to some degree).
moralestapia 2 hours ago [-]
>That's just how busy people type.
Lmao. If you think these people are busy, I have news for you.
k33n 39 minutes ago [-]
Their schedules are usually quite full, but their work doesn't really resemble an average person's.
rexpop 25 minutes ago [-]
Their schedules are full of leisure, and they can't be arsed to extend even the oz of courteous effort that proper punctuation and grammar require.
And their class all recognize it. Possibly it's a class marker.
Here, I have to carefully articulate my point because I am desperately trying to convince you not to carry water for the Epstein a class.
lab14 2 hours ago [-]
to me, the goal of written text is to put an idea or a concept in the mind of another person. _capitalization_ is one of those "arbitrary rules" that add absolutely nothing to this process unless you're using an obscure acronym.
in my mind, it's one of those ancient rules that are completely obsolete in the modern world. its only purpose is to allow others to say "i am better than you because i use this ancient rule that someone came up with a thousand years ago, so i'm smart and you're dumb".
being a non-native english speaker, removing capitalization from my writing removed a ton of anxiety when writing text and didn't change at all the landing of my messages or my ideas.
RiverCrochet 56 minutes ago [-]
WELL, THE CAPITAL LETTER FORMS WERE THE ORIGINAL ONES, THEN LOWERCASE ONES WERE CREATED BECAUSE THEY WERE FASTER FOR THE MONKS TO WRITE WHO WERE COPYING BOOKS. SOURCE: ROMAN RUINS. WE'RE NOT MONKS SO DEF COMPLETELY OBSOLETE. SO IF YOU WANT TO THROW OUT THE CAPITALIZATION RULES ENTIRELY, DO IT RIGHT AND USE ALL CAPS. THIS WOULD DEFINITELY MAKE IDEAS EASIER TO TRANSMIT AND RECEIVE.
WhyNotHugo 50 minutes ago [-]
I read this as someone shouting, and cannot override the voice in my head to not-shout while reading it.
ASalazarMX 45 minutes ago [-]
Beat me to this joke by a few minutes. Today seems like non-capitalization is the fad, but there was a time when all caps was the fad, at least in Spanish. It was mistakenly believed that capitals didn't need accents in Spanish, so illiterate people wrote all caps to avoid them. All lowercase feels the same.
rkomorn 52 minutes ago [-]
I love how aggressive capitals feel to me no matter the intent or tone.
This comment is just so much, all by virtue of caps lock.
ismailmaj 48 minutes ago [-]
Oh no, cortisol spike in my text-only forum.
RandomLensman 43 minutes ago [-]
ANDNOSPACESTHENPLEASE
lab14 42 minutes ago [-]
my point wasn't about using the "original rules", on the contrary it was about discarding uneeded ones. totally missed the point, but hey thanks for your contribution.
probably_wrong 2 hours ago [-]
It's hard to take your argument of "removing capitalization has made my writing better" seriously when your comment history shows that you do capitalize your written text. But leaving that aside:
Capitalization makes it easy for the reader to know where a concept ends and a new one begins. Without capitalization, your comment reads like a run-on sentence - a period in my display is 2px tall while a comma is 3.5px tall, the lack of capitalization makes my brain read them all as commas, and therefore your text is harder for me to parse. So I'd say yes, removing capitals did change the landing of your ideas for the worse.
netsharc 1 hours ago [-]
That reminds me of an interaction I had with a foreign exchange intern at my uni. I was working in an organization that organized these exchanges and I was giving him the orientation on his first day, including introducing him to his employer. The employer wanted him to write an email to some other person in the company, and he 1st wrote it with no caps n txtspeak, and when he was done he went back through it so it would have proper sentences...
It was flabbergasting..
bluGill 55 minutes ago [-]
If you want something to be clear you need to take time to re-read and revise it. If you really want to be sure there needs to be a full day between writing and revision (otherwise you will read what you meant to write, not what you actually wrote). For a presumably non-native speaker I expect he needed that extra effort.
Technically I should wait a day to hey the reply button here. I don't see anything wrong with this post now, but it is a reasonable bet that there is something that someone else sees.
officeplant 37 minutes ago [-]
>wait a day to hey the reply button here.
Haha, yeah. I was face palming some obvious typos in an important email earlier. Even after reading it four times. I find this helps in writing music as well. I come back a day later and so many things stick out that my brain would just gloss over.
lab14 45 minutes ago [-]
> It's hard to take your argument of "removing capitalization has made my writing better" seriously when your comment history shows that you do capitalize your written text.
right, because i couldn't have adopted this writing style in the past few weeks.
to address your second point, i could probably make better use of punctuation, but the original message is still delivered without all the fluff IMO.
Ignorance of why something exists is not a good enough reason to destroy it.
badgersnake 5 minutes ago [-]
Never heard of this before, but it’s great. Pretty succinct explanation of why effective reform is hard the likes of DOGE is counterproductive.
IshKebab 28 minutes ago [-]
Yes... though I think Chesterton's fence definitely belongs in the "technically correct advice that actually does more harm than good" bucket, like "premature optimisation", "if it works don't fix it", the Unix philosophy and so on.
This doesn't apply to capitalisation, but generally especially in computing if there's something that looks useless you should remove it. If it breaks the fault lies with whomever left something useless there without a note to explain it.
The current project I'm working on has about 3 copies of every component because nobody bothers to clear up after themselves - dead code isn't doing any harm and it's better to leave it in case it's needed right?
Well sure, if you want me to work about 3x slower than I otherwise could. Not an exaggeration.
ASalazarMX 48 minutes ago [-]
THIS IS WHY WE SHOULD GO BACK TO ALL CAPS SO WE HAVE LESS SYMBOLS TO WORRY AVOUT MAYBE GO BACK TO IGNORE DIACRITICS CUZ THEY ARE WIRD
IT IS THE WAY OF OUR FOUNCERS
lab14 44 minutes ago [-]
totally missed the point, but you do you.
ASalazarMX 22 minutes ago [-]
> _capitalization_ is one of those "arbitrary rules"
If you're going to qualify capitalization as an arbitrary rule, then it wouldn't matter if it's all lowercase or all uppercase. It's not a whim of scholars, it improves readability, it emphasizes, it carries meaning.
All uppercase looks loud today, but early computers were also all uppercase and it was normal. All lowercase looks bland and sloppy, only a few steps removed from "what u doing lol?" texting shorthand.
redwood 2 hours ago [-]
My personal take is that it's easier for me to read your sentences if you help me see where they begin and end and this is part of capitalization's value. So at least for me your goal of putting ideas in my mind may be a little less effective
squigz 1 hours ago [-]
If you care about communicating an idea or concept effectively, things like capitalization and grammar are absolutely important.
The random misspellings, missing spaces, sloppy grammar, etc in the examples in the article seem different to me. Misspelling "en route" as "enriewu" doesn't show, "look, I know the secret country club spelling for en route". It simply shows that you don't have to care about your mistakes. You write something that approximates what you mean, and you're too important to spend time revising. The mistake could be "enrout" or "n route" or on any other word. But you're not going to be a try-hard who edits and frets over their messages, you're blessing someone with 10 seconds of your attention and they're lucky to receive your correspondence, typos and all.
I see what you did there. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law
It's not always that way though, consider 'niche': it's AmE that decided it's 'nitch'!
If there were just French words pronounced in a French way and English words which came from French and are now pronounced in an English way that would be bad enough but in fact we have a whole spectrum of bastardisation.
As to fillet and valet, they joined english before the contemporary french pronunciation, and are much closer to the middle-french.
My favorite is probably crepe, which Americans pronounce like an almost diphthong-y craype (or crape like grape I guess) when crep (like step) would do just fine and be closer to the original.
But as a native French and basically-native American speaker, I also couldn't really care less about it, or about things like Americans pronouncing the t in croissant, or French people being unable to say the.
See also: Cairo, IL or Versailles, KY...
Fillet/valet are mis-pronounced because of mallet, pallet, etc. Renaissance? Nail, snail, tail, etc.
It really is that simple, we're just pronouncing them as if they were an English word.
Imaging me fresh from USSR asking someone how do I get to ... and getting blank stare
This is a monstrous crime against language.
When someone says "aks" instead of "ask", they know what they're doing. They look around and think "I am like those who say aks, so I will say aks too. Those who say ask are outsiders". So I response: Ok, you're an outside to me then.
Approaching like "they can't speak properly and we're evil for excluding them" is patronising and racist.
If the game is wearing a $20k watch or understanding the covert signs of status that you might find in a particular community, that's something different.
* Very time-consuming, especially for edits/corrections
* Lacks functionality (where is undo? the right/left arrow keys?) and other functionality is very poor (mouse/pointer control)
* Frustrating!
* Consumes attention: I can type on a full keyboard while looking elsewhere - including talking to someone else, though of course all actions suffer. On full keyboards I can type while reading something, to transcribe it, or I can just watch the output. Or just imagine using keyboard-based commands (e.g., Vim) on a smartphone.
I've tried alternative screen keyboards and they are a bit better, but it still sucks a lot.
Phones will always be miserable - but they are the least miserable option in a lot of situations and so I expect people to use them a lot just because the other tools are even worse.
For heavy typers, physical keyboards in candybar phones (.e.g, old Blackberrys, etc.) and landscape-oriented clamshells fix many issues, but those are outre for some reason. Even on-screen UIs could be better. Just arrow keys to move to the cursor precisely would be a signficant improvement.
I use a bluetooth keyboard for typing on my phone unless I'm out in the world. The number of people who want to have long-form conversations through a phone interface is shocking to me since it's such an awful experience and there are so, so many available alternatives.
The founders said it was very 'senior' of him and laughed about it. But it's also kind of indicative of seniority because senior people aren't wasting time looking up the correct spelling of a company name - they get the email out with the salient details with the right amount of time invested into it. You want to be dialed in but also if you're doing lots of stuff at scale it doesn't really matter what the name of the startup is. Ideally you did the right diligence before the decision to invest was made but then at that point only a few key things matter and are worth keeping in hot memory any more - things like where the founders went to college (in case it helps with a future connection), what the market is (in case it helps with a future connection), what they need help with (in case it can be brought up with a connection), etc...
but spelling and grammar still isn't a good indicator for expertise, intelligence or anything like that even in an academic context
Mainly:
1. Dyslexia doesn't make you dump, just likely to misspell and a less likely to notice your misspelling.
2. When speaking about neurodivergence people mainly think about Autism or ADHD but sometimes just mean that your brain thinks in very different patters, this can make grammar hard. Especially if it's not your native language.
3. Sometimes people had shitty situations earlier in their live, leading to incorrectly learning parts of languages. This is hard to fix. But isn't really representative in any way for their expertise in any topic which isn't the given languages grammar.
4. English grammar and pronunciation to spelling mapping aren't exactly well designed. People not wanting to bother with it is not really related to intelligence, or excellence in other topics.
5. Some kinds of expertise are unrelated to general intelligence, expertise, education. So even if spelling and grammar where related to intelligence, it wouldn't be meaningful to judge expertise.
I worked with a tech founder at one point in my life, and I once happened to get a glance at his undergrad college transcripts which were, for reasons unknown, just sitting out on his desk. It was all Ds and Cs. He barely graduated! Yet his networth was more than the combined net worth of all of his employees.
If the delta is simply "cognitive load" then we're back to the theory I already posted.
Gotta be really incredibly efficient while planning your time on Epstein Island doing Epstein Class things to Epstein girls.
These world changing guys clearly have no spare time on their hands at all.
Or at the very least, the things we tell ourselves are meritorious are not what actually what causes people to rise to the top of our society.
By the way I'm also astonished by their lack of taste. The Epstein properties give off a sinister vibe as one would expect, but watching -- for instance -- Architectural Digest videos you get the impression that either the property has been professionally staged with pottery barn/cb2 esthetic or it was decorated with painting-of-dogs-playing-poker levels of sophistication.
Not surprising I guess but you'd think someone with essentially unlimited budget who has complete dominion over their own time wouldn't end up living in an enormous, expensive, alienating ugg boot.
It is bunk. Nobody who has even a modicum of critical thinking ability thinks that Donald Trump or Elon Musk are geniuses.
Luck and circumstance are an immense part of success.
You can’t really understand Trump’s decisions unless you understand that despite all evidence to the contrary, Trump himself truly believes he is the smartest person in the room, regardless of who else is in it; and he will not suffer anyone who dares to contradict him.
If your theory is correct and the global elite really isn't significantly smarter than the average population then the next question is, how are they maintaining their spots against smarter competitors?
This question is only difficult to answer if we believe that our system operates on merit. A system that operates on power, connections, and backroom favors happily maintains the status of mediocre people.
Blackmail, lying, cunning, manipulation, backstabbing, machiavellianism, etc,
You need to be intelligent at these, above all else.
And corruption of power is the cause, I suspect. It has poisoned human minds in all places and times; none of us are immune (which is why we design governments that limit individual power). An early lesson in being in charge was that, having nobody to whom I reported, who would see my work and compel me to a high standard, I let things slip.
Reportees rarely help you: Often they don't know what you do; when they do see it, they assume it's acceptable - you know what you want, and you set the standard of quality and establish the norms. Generally they have obvious disincentives against disapproving of you, and not just as some political tactic but for personal comfort: days are much more pleasant if your boss is friendly. They will give positive or at least non-negative responses to most substandard boss work.
I had to learn to think of it in two ways: First, would I accept this work from someone reporting to me? Second, I internalized the medium- and long-term consequences of substandard leadership and management: once your organization has caught that disease, once that's your reputation, it's very hard to change.
Reminds me how I double and triple check the emails I sent out to the higher ups in the company to make sure spelling and language tone was good, while in his emails Epstein was like "wazzup retards, kiddie fiddling party at my place" and getting replies from 3 world leaders and 5 CEOs. Then him and Israel's' former PM were both struggling to spell PALANTIR over the phone. It's a big club and you're not in it.
people love talking to them
Not sure I agree. I remember e-mails being capitalized and punctuated.
It's not so much typos and laziness as much as incomplete thoughts and distraction. Communication as a whole has devolved from an e-mail with a complete thought and some details to a text or chat message without capitalization, punctuation or context.
The lack of capitalization and punctuation are just a tell to me that the sender didn't put thought into it.
I can't tell you how many times I get a chat message asking a question. I in return ask questions about context, and explain why I'm asking. Then the original sender gets annoyed and provides context. Then I ask more questions. Then the original sender gets quiet. Then I get an invite to a meeting to discuss with a wider audience.
I make an effort to use correct spelling and grammar in everything I write that's longer than "ok i'll check when at office", but sometimes it slips past. People still seem to understand what I'm telling them, though, and that's the ultimate goal.
Ima call bullshit on this. Read the published letters of some historical figures.
You see it start to change with the telegraph on down to where we are today.
Telegrams were paid by the word, and were all uppercase by design, they're not an evolution of language. It took more effort to adapt your message to a telegram than to write a proper sentence.
I wouldn't spend nearly as much effort on something ephemeral and instant. For instance, I'm not going to mail my sister in another state a letter saying "ok thanks". I very while might text her that, because 1) she knows exactly what I'm referring to — the thing we were talking about 11 seconds earlier; 2) the customs of messaging mean she doesn't expect or want a wall of text; and 3) if she has any more questions, she can ask them and I'll reply within a minute or two.
"Dictated but not read."
There is a time pressure to communicate this way, but I think it's generally a management mistake:
Managment includes leadership (usually). Your messages are most of what most people in the organization see of you. You set the high bar; nobody will prioritize quality and attention to detail more than you. And that standard is global IME - you can't very effectively set the example that messages can be sloppy but nothing else.
For messages to my social inner circle, for example, I am much less careful - misspellings, abbreviations, etc. For messages to people I manage or lead, I make sure it's perfect every time.
Messages to a single vice president get much less care.
Lmao. If you think these people are busy, I have news for you.
And their class all recognize it. Possibly it's a class marker.
Here, I have to carefully articulate my point because I am desperately trying to convince you not to carry water for the Epstein a class.
being a non-native english speaker, removing capitalization from my writing removed a ton of anxiety when writing text and didn't change at all the landing of my messages or my ideas.
This comment is just so much, all by virtue of caps lock.
Capitalization makes it easy for the reader to know where a concept ends and a new one begins. Without capitalization, your comment reads like a run-on sentence - a period in my display is 2px tall while a comma is 3.5px tall, the lack of capitalization makes my brain read them all as commas, and therefore your text is harder for me to parse. So I'd say yes, removing capitals did change the landing of your ideas for the worse.
It was flabbergasting..
Technically I should wait a day to hey the reply button here. I don't see anything wrong with this post now, but it is a reasonable bet that there is something that someone else sees.
Haha, yeah. I was face palming some obvious typos in an important email earlier. Even after reading it four times. I find this helps in writing music as well. I come back a day later and so many things stick out that my brain would just gloss over.
right, because i couldn't have adopted this writing style in the past few weeks.
to address your second point, i could probably make better use of punctuation, but the original message is still delivered without all the fluff IMO.
Ignorance of why something exists is not a good enough reason to destroy it.
This doesn't apply to capitalisation, but generally especially in computing if there's something that looks useless you should remove it. If it breaks the fault lies with whomever left something useless there without a note to explain it.
The current project I'm working on has about 3 copies of every component because nobody bothers to clear up after themselves - dead code isn't doing any harm and it's better to leave it in case it's needed right?
Well sure, if you want me to work about 3x slower than I otherwise could. Not an exaggeration.
IT IS THE WAY OF OUR FOUNCERS
If you're going to qualify capitalization as an arbitrary rule, then it wouldn't matter if it's all lowercase or all uppercase. It's not a whim of scholars, it improves readability, it emphasizes, it carries meaning.
All uppercase looks loud today, but early computers were also all uppercase and it was normal. All lowercase looks bland and sloppy, only a few steps removed from "what u doing lol?" texting shorthand.