Gen Z Netiquettes(manyonepercents.substack.com) |
Gen Z Netiquettes(manyonepercents.substack.com) |
Wouldn’t this make the author a millennial?
I guess I’ll still confused about the talk of Yahoo messenger along with this:
>As I’m stepping into my late 20s…
What is Gen Z? My rule of thumb has been “people that definitely don’t remember 9/11” to distinguish between two very different generations.
- Ending a sentence with period sounds overly serious for one-liner or short messages. If you write multiple sentences in a message it's still OK to use periods (though writing a long paragraph over multiple messages can also come off as serious, so ultimately it depends on the tone you want to convey in your message)
I have a feeling many would have problems reading basic articles where their attention would scream about jumping paragraphs.
and this isn't a gen z thing. it's just how instant messaging has worked forever.
or like some people
i chat with
who send the whole sentence
as separate messagesThe only thing that surprised me was that "outside" simply means "outside your home" now.
Is this a thing now? Smileys are bad?
Am I doing it right?
Get an iPhone, like 90% of Gen Z. Or gtfo.
All, and I really do mean ALL, messages that arrive on my phone are over whatsapp, telegram or discord.
The green/blue bubble thing is classist and problematic and bringing it up is frankly embarrassing.
But yeah, that's about it. Everything else is via some messenger service, mostly Discord or Facebook.
Apple's Messages
> Who TF is still using
Americans
That sounds like a feature.
We still don't use SMS, because it sucks in every single way compared to bespoke chat apps like Telegram, Signal or WhatsApp.
You wish. Maybe in America. The rest of the world not. SMS are either for SPAM, for secure login PINs and for goverment advices. Not used by anyone anymore.
Not that it matters, I'm not American.
Gen Z is generally said to begin in 1997.
I guess turning 30 has officially pushed me into the "old" generation. I'm ok with that.
It's not done to be edgy, or to fit in, or anything like that. Its different tones in text. If the other party doesn't speak this language, then the communication becomes very literal, very formal. Kind of like how someone who is oblivious to social cues comes across in spoken conversations, only without the stigma, as its quite normal to not know this stuff. But it's much harder to 'feel' the other person.
If you read someone's text and then also read their Instagram story and you still haven't replied, that's fine. If anything it's a bit of a power move. But really it's just what ends up happening when you're busy and don't have time to dick around on social media and overthink shit.
The article smacks of a mild anxiety disorder which is a common affliction of youth (sadly increasingly these days it's not so mild). The author would do well to ignore other people's petty shit and spend the next decade preoccupied with kicking ass at whatever he's best at.
And rules like in the article would all be easy to remember. What's not in the article is whether/what skills you'll need to develop to process all this information and noise.
For example, I remember seeing a busy chat room for the first time in the mid-'90s, and there was so much people talking, and it was scrolling seemingly too fast to read. (Bonus: I was on a then-vintage green CRT terminal, HP 2392A, at that moment, so incomprehensible scrolling of symbols was not entirely unlike the Matrix visual.)
But after some experience with the chat, it was no longer overwhelming. I could glance at the scrollage and have a sense of who was talking, what was being discussed, and possibly some meta of what was going on. And, for incoming messages, I could be tracking and selectively focusing among the often multiple concurrent threads of conversation.
I suppose skills a bit analogous to that might include how to manage the many different online services today you have to be on today, applying critical processing to advertising/engagement feed algorithms, juggling all this inefficient stuff with more real-life things, etc.
All the rules around instagram likes and reposting, the rules around “k”, that “:)” is passive aggressive etc. A lot of that feels juvenile which makes sense if it’s a gen z post. I’d guess it’ll stop once out of teens and early to mid twenties.
I think when people are more secure/confident they stop doing as much meta analysis of this kind.
Same with the difference colours of laughter "lol, rofl, haha, hahaha, lmao, ha." They're all just laughing but I bet you had different ideas about how each of them feel. This happens with language at large, synonymous words pick up nuanced differences so that we can express ourselves better, they aren't codified they just spread naturally.
I think for full stops, it's like the difference between familiar language and polite language. If you are too polite with a close friend you give off the impression that you're not close enough for casual language, which can be insulting.
This one really surprises me, if someone contacted me without bothering to type a proper sentence I would just think they're an idiot. Everyone I know always starts a sentence with a capital letter, no matter the platform. They all know how to use the shift key.
This isn't even gate keeping, people use slang all the time, it is basic English. News, books, articles, tutorials, emails, teams, share point... Everything I read every day has proper capitalization.
If you find yourself finding smug, try looking at an old Reddit rage comic/4chan greentext/usenet flamewar, depending on your age.
Social media platforms approve.
An entire generation has been trained by Mark Zuckerberg to boost engagement on his properties
The idea that there’s a special GenZ rule about full stops is bullshit. It’s all just tone and context. If you’re texting someone who evidently likes ending every message with a full stop, you obviously aren’t going to assume every single message is insulting (unless you’re an idiot or very paranoid). If you’re texting with someone who never uses full stops but then they suddenly use one at the end of a message and the message is kind of abrupt (like if it’s refusing a request) then it might feel kind of ‘firm’. This is something any intelligent/sensitive person, at any age, could pick up on, or not. It’s nothing to do with GenZ. It’s been this way since the start of internet messaging. It’s just recently become a dumb meme that fills column inches in newspapers because it creates a confused talking point where boomers etc are supposed to be aghast that they’ve been accidentally offending GenZ people by using full stops. It’s just dumb, dumb, dumb.
It's like if MSN Messenger status were back again, and young people that I know are loving it :)
I guess some ideas are fun no matter the generation. There are also older people who got to experience MSN Messenger, and are asking when the music status updates will come too!
Meta/Fb just brought a decades-old staple into their app, and I find that amusing.
That's not a gen z thing. That's an entitle US social media projection.
Edit: I added a few emojis in the original message, but it seems automatically removed—another nice thing for hacker news.
And that is before taking into account totally arbitrary shortcuts and meanings are introduced in various communities.
As a communication tool within a tight group, sure. But outside that emojis are pretty darn bad. Unless you stick to the subset that pretty closely maps to ascii smileys.
As a writer, try to follow the style your audience expects. That advice applies to informal personal communications. But don't engage heavily in this practice as a reader. It can be counterproductive to communication.
Not all of it obviously and I don’t even think that’s strictly a Gen Z thing specifically (much of it could have been written about my mother for example) but JFC it sounds emotionally draining way to live your life.
But what does it mean when the third boyfriend of my first boyfriend whose first boyfriend I was keeps watching my Instagram stories but not following me, considering my first boyfriend blocked me everywhere? Are they sitting there together laughing at my stories? Does he watch me out of low self confidence? He must know I know he is watching them. Should I write him? That kind of would violate my rule to accept my first ex desire not to communicate with me ever again.
Young people / social media communication and whole new categories of communication channels / signs/cues like getting your story watched is quite complex!
Sentence-s, well structured sentences (with it punctuation marks and capitalization) are in this context like evoking latin phrases let alone a fortiori whole paragraphs.
If one takes chatgpt into the equation writing essays will be as calculating without a calculator for the next adolescent generation and used mainly as intimidation given the current education system - or preferably a playful approach at pattern recognition emerging from formal rules conveying abstract concepts.
People must really think I hate them lol.
"Disclaimer: theoretically speaking I’m a genZ. But I could never identify myself as one because I never quite know about most of the rules until recently. This is a gen Z edition, because gen Z practices these rules a lot, not because I’m one."
I don't think the generation you're born in is something you identify with. Nor do I think that people "practice" the generational rules, as these "rules" are the result of their behaviour not something that one would practice/actively strive to do. As such, no matter what you do, that actions and behaviour is of the generation that you're born into.
Example: You don't choose your parents, nor do you choose your siblings.
If most of your siblings engage in daily running but you don't, saying that you don't identify as a child of you parents because children of your parents engage in daily running, is a bit of a backwards to the objective truth. (I can't think of a better way to put it into words, but I hope that fellow thinkers can see the logic that I'm trying to explain.)
Maybe something like this: It is illogical to define yourself by the actions of others.
Or:
The actions of others, front define who you are.
tl;dr: You are GenZ not because of what you do. But because what you do, is done by GenZ.
Edit: You are not a man because you do manly things. Things are manly because a man does them.
The only one that is new (and therefore annoying to me as an Old Internet Man) is the insistance of adding emojis into every sentence
For a while I could guess someones approximate age because of it, but now some of my 40+ friends have started emojiing like a 14 year olds too
But it's also great for dry humor over text. Like when you switch to corporate-speak as a joke between friends:
A: "Looks like our main factory just blew up"
B: "Yes. Given the prevailing macroeconomic conditions, I felt that downsizing that factory was critical to actioning the quarterly plan."
---
Or alternatively, when you're sending a flurry of messages and want to show that you're done with the thought:
A: "Looks like things are improving"
A: "Like, the RAM use just dropped by ~20%"
A: "the GC probably just finished."
As others pointed out, capitalization is similar to white space, punctuation, and other tools that English has when it comes to informal communication.
Especially online, you can invoke a lot of imagery and thoughts and emotions by simply playing with the rules of English in a live-chat setting. Try to imagine in a chat the following sentence with different stylizations:
"The Customer is always right, so we need to work to correct this"
"thE CUsTomer iS aLWays RIght, So WE neEd To WoRK To cOrrECT thiS"
"the customer is always right, so we need to work to correct this :))))"
The first is quite formal and it's direct; perhaps it could be understood as sarcasm if someone knows you well, but it could also be taken at face value and quite seriously, or it could be taken as a throw-away statement.
The second indicates a mocking tone and maybe even resentment, taking the time to mimic a meme and also to purposefully make the sentence silly looking.
The third introduces the sarcastic smiley (I disagree with the article's interpretation, as I've always seen :))) to more represent desperation or exasperation)
With traditional rules of English, tone is difficult to convey with a single sentence and it's built with the surrounding text as a point of consideration to understand how to interpret a statement; with chat, this is far more difficult to communicate the emotion/intention as chats can be very fast and disconnected, and it's hard to follow the attitude and mood of a person to understand their intended messaging.
You could try to divorce the message from the emotions, which might lead to expediting some discussions, but it also leaves a lot of room for incorrect/wrong interpretations. Even if you divorce yourself from such concerns and try to be above it, your conversation partners might not approach it the same way.
The evolution of chat might be bastardizing the classic rules of English, but it's quite expressive and personally has made many conversations and relationships much easier with fewer misunderstandings.
These "gen-Z" rules are great if you are 15 and have nothing more to do with your time than worry if Emily fancies you or not by how many chins she gave her ascii text art smile. I was there: when I was a teenager on IRC and MSN messenger I was on hooks at the smallest detail; how long was it taking someone to reply, have they received the message, oh-no they're replying now I better not type out a message, they signed off "ilyvm" not "ily" they must have really liked me today...
This sounds quite dismissive, and it is in a way. "Old" people don't need to understand the difference between "k" and "k.". Gen-Z need to communicate to their audience and there's nothing more embarrassing than old people learning young people lingo.
how about simply taking the sentences at face value?
"We need to improve on XXX"
Almost certainly means exactly what it says, no need to look for hidden emotions where most probably there are none.
We as humans have used written communication for millennia and no emotion got lost when they needed to be conveyed.
Yes, my social-economic status is defined specifically by how I use capital letters.
This netiquette is on chatting. And chatting in lower has been the case of choice since early IRC days.
The one thing that was completely true though was the smile thing “good job :)” is extremely toxic.
Most of this list is just things people tend to do but wouldn’t notice if you didn’t.
Especially when paired with phrases like "who dat". You're just coming across as doing the barely minimum effort to write. Like people that mumble because they can't be bothered with communicating to you.
An "idiot" does things without knowing or considering why. People choosing to break old capitalization rules to better communicate are a step above those who can't handle that the english they learned in grade school no longer exists.
Other than that plenty of non idiots forget to capitalize a sentence.
Perhaps people should just read the content of the message and stop worrying about the set-dressing. "They capitalized, they must be a nerd", "she ended that will a full stop, she must be mad!".
I’d say that copying trend is mostly visible in the early- to middle-millennial cohort who are starting to realize that they’re not the center of the world anymore, a boomer-like reaction on a more reduced scale, if you wish.
(These days I aim for proper sentences also in instant messaging, acknowledging the asynchronous nature of it. But if I happen to catch my conversation partner active, I might switch to the more informal, "verbal" style.)
----
[1]: You may think you speak in proper sentences, but try to transcribe an audio recording literally some day. You might be surprised!
Sure, but doesn't that just mark you (and me) as older millenials / gen-X?
See the first email in this article:
https://www.businessinsider.in/emails-from-googles-eric-schm...
Wasn't the whole Blackberry shtick about having a full qwerty keyboard so the business folk could send messages that didn't look like T9 gibberish?
Those examples just sound real lazy Gen Z writing
The other ones I kinda agree (with measure), but this one is awful. Then they ask why "is it so hard to get a job". Job market issues aside, don't come across as a dork.
Not disagreeing with you, but I think what constitutes as being a dork depends heavily on the situation (workplace culture, etc.). Writing like a Gen Z doesn't necessarily make one a dork.
I'd argue that the reverse is true: not writing like everyone else (i.e. completely ignoring the so called "Gen Z Netiquette") makes you a dork for being inept at adapting to the new social norm.
If I am trying to communicate something or it's the first message then it's always capitalized with the usual punctuation. Maybe even a semi-colon if I am feeling listy.
Wait till you encounter would of should of could of -.-
it’s a bit of a power move but also makes it easier to establish relationships
Your point is well taken, and thankfully I have neither a pony tail nor a motorcycle, but I am quite likely to observe 40 years of habit and driving in the guardrails of the language.
Or, ya know, don’t read shit into the message that isn’t there.
My generation did it too.
Social progress is not linear growth but sinusoidal.
> - Socrates, 400 B.C.
>Every time some new generation starts to create its own identity, some proportion of the previous dominant generation reacts defensively by attacking it with wilful ignorance and disdain. It's a tragic way to age. Worse than a diadema and a peneia.
> - the youth, 400 B.C.
---
>The children now love the internet; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love reddit in place of blog posts. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer use facebook while their uncles still do. They contradict their parents, text before company, gobble up memes on TikTok, twerk, and tyrannize their teachers.
> - boomers, 2023 A.D.
>Every time some new generation starts to create its own identity, some proportion of the previous dominant generation reacts defensively by attacking it with wilful ignorance and disdain. It's a tragic way to age. Worse than a ponytail and a motorbike.
> - devnullbrain, 2023 A.D.
Current youth seems to suffer from many more mental disorders (such as depression) than before. Share of people who had sex by their early twenties dropped significantly, which may be a consequence of having less intimacy and more solitude. Non-academically-talented young men seem to be less successful than ever before, to the degree that even liberal coastal media stopped making fun of them and started describing the situation as dire and in need of addressing.
Such problems may be fake (percepted, but not real), but they can, in fact, be real. We are not doing ourselves or anyone else a favor by invoking glib, thought-terminating clichés about the old eternally grumbling about the young.
There must be a middle way between the "get off my lawn" and "this is an ancient trope that only deserves mocking" attitudes.
> It was crafted by a student, Kenneth John Freeman, for his Cambridge dissertation published in 1907. Freeman did not claim that the passage under analysis was a direct quotation of anyone; instead, he was presenting his own summary of the complaints directed against young people in ancient times.
And don't criticize what you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly aging
Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand
For the times, they are a-changin-
I work with a fairly large and diverse IT team with age ranges from 22 to 60+; a lot of this involves disagreements as is natural with any conversations with a large group of people.
Discussions with the younger demographic are far more productive and faster as they're quite specific in their statements and when there is a disagreement, they put it out there fairly openly, explaining intent and feelings, and when I reciprocate, we get to a faster understanding of one another and any potential misunderstandings we might have had, view points we hadn't considered, or parts that aren't clear for us. The initial conversations take a bit longer, but ultimately end up with all parties understanding the situation well. It's quite healthy I think.
With the older age group, I definitely know _when_ they're angry or upset about something or when they disagree with me, but I rarely know _why_. Trying to slow down the conversation and have the same "help me understand what you're thinking/feeling so we can better communicate" often is not received well, and while the conversations are more direct initially, they last far longer and result in more tirades, walls of text, and dozens of arguments with loose or no connection to the topic at hand.
I don't see the younger persons as being sensitive, I see them as being specific; I think they're better trained socially to express themselves and reflect on their reactions and their state, and embracing this by participating in the same way is very freeing. I can have what might be considered difficult discussions (corrections, disciplinary actions, etc) and understand that while likely the conversation partner is not happy, they feel understood, I've presented my point of view, and when presented with new information, all sides have been very receptive.
With my older colleagues, the same sensitivity and emotions are there, but I'm far less aware of it even if I specifically take actions to show I want to understand more.
There is definitely a culture clash, and I think that the reactions of "snow flakes" and "triggered" are not accurate, and it's more about two persons separated by a common language failing to communicate. Given how well conversations with my younger colleagues go, I'm more inclined to prefer this model.
Well, to give just a few examples:
* The worst interpretation of a sentence said by politicians is usually accurate
* In contractual law, the worst interpretation of a clause is the one you need to prepare for
* In advertising, the absolute worst interpretation of a phrase is usually accurate
* If you get a letter of recommendation, the worst interpretation is the intended one
So you adapt to this world.
Actually, that might be a major alert. Yes, young people feel very insecure nowadays, and I bet much more than dork-me when I was 17. Spending time online doesn’t help feeling socially apt, and it builds up as an entire part of that generation identifying as socially afraid.
But yeah, I can see how that’s clearly a recipe for disaster.
But don't worry, people are generally able to adapt to the other person, knowing that a boomer (or non-lit gen-z) might be oblivious to some rules, and is not out to scare you with a plain smiley ;)
If most of your interactions are online then yeah, I guess you’re going to have to be a lot more explicit about showing positive reinforcement all the time.
Hah, I think that's just part of being a young adult, isn't it?
just think back to your own ways of communication within your circles of people, that would be 'subtle' like that, and just, realize that 'this is just other people coming up with their own things'. like, even bro culture is chock full of social cues, subtleties, unspoken things, 'if they do this, you do that', and so on. it's truly not new in any sense, especially not in regards to what you call "insecurity". and 'sensitivity' is not a bad thing by any means. especially around and with your closest people.
I proposed that they were (sort of) pronouncing the punctuation, as in "I'll be home. Period.", and it seems to sound that way. Odd, but it seems wide-spread.
I refuse to do this on Reddit. I long for a simpler time when it was literally impossible to tell who was being sarcastic and who is a genuine crazy person.
I actually stopped using it for a long time before unashamedly returning to it. It's just so easy compared to other shows of levity, AND it's scalable. xD is some levity. XDDDDDD is MORE levity. Like with :))))), except that's some psychotic boomer Russian shit. x3 adds a cuteness squee element to it. xP is more playful.
I'd argue that on a keyboard, it is also showing intention and effort. Everyone is so used to proper capitalization, it comes automatically. I don't have to make an effort to press shift when I press 'I', it's entirely subconscious.
Capitalization is largely unrelated to effort or lazyness. Except for a few extreme cases whose lack of effort is just as visible in the rest of the prose, or the quality of the ideas.
Furthermore, I'd encourage one to spend more effort evaluating the substance of what someone has to say, rather than dismissing their intelligence on account of cultural or stylistic differences. Limiting yourself to a smaller bubble out of disdain seems like self-inflicted imprisonment.
[1] https://blogs.transparent.com/greek/texting-and-tweeting-in-...
Most of these rules rang very true to me at least. For example, capitalizing letters in _informal_ chats does give off a formal tone. This doesn't mean no one does it, but it's definitely a thing.
Holy shit, no wonder they're all so perpetually miserable.
For example - https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara
Sahara (arabiska: الصحراء الكبرى, aṣ-ṣaḥrā' al-kubra, "Den största öknen")
"I think they're better trained socially to express themselves and reflect on their reactions and their state" My alternate construal is that they're convinced their interpretation is accurate / important. i.e.: That their feelings in any given situation have as much or more weight as what is objectively true.
This meme feels wildly ironic to me, given I grew up in an environment of Old People Upset That Teenagers These Days Are Having Too Much Sex.
I do not think you can think of it that way. It's said that the subtleties of spoken language are lost in text, but in this case, the subtleties of the written word are lost in spoken language.
If a Gen Z can't write basic sentences with basic grammar and punctuation then that shows poor English skills. In the work place setting, as the OP was talking about, this is really important. It also shows lack of awareness or respect or empathy because they can't communicate to their intended audience (colleagues/interviewer) using language appropriate for the setting (a professional work place).
True. But I don't do that (quite the opposite, but I don't write like that here, because again, reading the room is important) ;)
In the past people have taken advantage of this "mainstream" metadata to interrupt me further with increasingly desperate follow-ups and/or to jump to cynical assumptions about their value to me as a person unnecessarily jeopardizing our relationship.
So like GP I turn this functionality off and refuse to use platforms that don't allow it to be disabled. This "feature" is not required for good faith conversations between non-adversarial parties.
Do I crave control over your context? Only insomuch as I refuse to be at the 24/7 beck and call of anyone with a phone. If you want to have a real-time discussion with me you can either have the good fortune to have contacted me at a moment in which I was not otherwise occupied or you can schedule a time with me in advance.
Your views say far more about your own intelligence/laziness than anyone else’s.
Grammar and punctuation exists for a reason. Try reading a book without any.
I have absolutely zero difficulty parsing uncapitalised text. Most of my communication is and has been uncapitalised for the past 20 years. Including in professional context (Slack, git etc). If you’re struggling, it’s because you’re lazy, not because it’s difficult.
For example, I pretty much never use the clown emoji as I find it personally offensive. But I'm sure that pretty much everyone else doesn't feel the same about it.
Westerners use it to signify they're pissed while it actually means triumph in Asia I believe.
Aren't you doing exactly that when you complain how people type their messages?
What am I offended at? Clothes do give off an impression, just like using basic grammar and punctuation.
These aren't US specific Gen-Z rules, these are quite global. This is happening far outside the scope you're limiting it to, and it matters.
Do you mean that you usually interact at work with people than cannot properly capitalize sentences, like we learned to do in primary school in practically any language that uses the Latin alphabet?
I capitalize English because capitalization in my language (and any other language I can write) follows the same exact rules.
It is a rule, it doesn't take much, capitalizing sentences at best proves that people know the basic grammar rules of the language and know when and how to use them, nothing more.
Not doing it proves that people either don't care or don't know the basic rules of the language, which says a lot more than doing it properly.
On HN I’ll use correct punctuation, grammar, and a wider set of vocabulary because there’s a good chance my message will come across more clearly.
For general emails, I’ll write with simpler language because it’s very much a get-in-get-out activity especially with more senior stakeholders.
For work comms, what’s the value in typing HN-style? Everyone already knows everyone else is smart. I believe communicating tone is more valuable than perfect punctuation and grammar, which make it much harder to get that across.
Or as my grandma used to say - you don’t treat people you want to be treated, you treat them the way they want to be treated.
> These aren't US specific Gen-Z rules, these are quite global.
These rules are specifically about English, and a younger generation. It's not as global as you think.
Given that almost all of these are English-specific or at least european language specific, no that is completely false.
Ah yeah, true! So basically now we're kind of forced into reading everything, even when it's private, as some kind of press release.
That's fine, I didn't want to date those people. You know why? People are really good at portraying themselves as a totally different character over text. It's fake. It's all fake. It's harder to be fake in person.
I'm engaged now to someone who isn't triggered by an omitted period, isn't addicted to his phone, isn't obsessed with social media. Totally on my level. It's awesome. (Not a gen Z, obviously). Post-covid dating was a total shitshow.
The plain smiley can sound like sarcasm/irony or a passive-agressive tone, because it looks a little lifeless compared to modern emojis that are more expressive. It used to be the most expressive you could be, but now it's the most plain you can be. The least amount of smiling you could be smiling. It can look like a fake smile as a result.
Humorous take: Sensitive snowflakes gonna sensitive.
---
Serious take: The new generation rejects what was acceptable to the previous generation as part of the process of developing their own identity :)
Humorous take: Sensitive snowflakes gonna sensitive :)
The surprising part to me is that I have an old pamphlet from Hayes that has a catalog of emoticons as we used to refer to them. This means that :) has changed its meaning in a generation or so... which I never considered that "pictograms" could do that.
It could also be that the context sets the tone and the emoticons are nuanced.
My point is the exact opposite though: I've been writing like this for all of my life, for at least 40 years, to write like I don't care I need to actually think about it and put a lot more effort into it, because it feels unnatural, looks wrong and makes me immediately doubt of the quality of the content I produced.
Especially at work, where when I write something, it is for other people to read, sometimes many.
But I also capitalize my personal notes.
So, to me, your explanation of why you don't do it sounds like "look at me, I don't follow rules because we are all smart here, right guys? ... right?".
Don't want to be offensive, but correct grammar should be muscle memory by now.
Relying on muscle memory is good because it works on autopilot and let you focus on what's important.
I didn't learn this lesson the hard way until I was past my mid-20s. When you write something for others, it's far better to optimize for them rather than for yourself. Let's say you spend twice as much time writing something in an 'odd' way, but it gets your 50% more reach or alignment or funding. That's probably actually a great use of your time.
> So, to me, your explanation of why you don't do it sounds like "look at me, I don't follow rules because we are all smart here, right guys? ... right?".
It's not about being contrarian, it's about the tradeoff. Tone is incredibly important in most situations.
When you write with perfect grammar and punctuation, most people don't know how to read into the nuance. Happy? Joyful? Pleased? Content? There's very little, if any, common understanding of the intensity or undertone in those adjectives. Imagine you're working with a new PM and he tells you the team's progress is 'acceptable.' What does that mean exactly? Is he happy with it? Is he mildly annoyed? Does he feel like things are off track and actually wants to talk more?
So how do we build this common understanding? It turns out most people have actually already built up a language with their friends! Through texts/DMs/etc. So when that language is ported over to a work context, most people immediately grasp it.
You can conform to the world or the world can conform to you. <-- A sentence where tone would be helpful.
I still can't understand the argument here, it sounds so off that seems fabricated to me.
When you read the Divine Comedy (we study it in high school in Italy) the grammar is not in current modern Italian, the style is from 550 years ago, the poem is written in hendecasyllables in terza rima [1], the references are often obscure, but in no point of it the tone is hard to understand, because the author conveys it explicitly.
l’ora del tempo e la dolce stagione;
ma non sì che paura non mi desse
la vista che m’apparve d’un leone.
Questi parea che contra me venisse
con la test’alta e con rabbiosa fame,
sì che parea che l’aere ne tremesse.
Writing is a non-verbal, not-in-person, form of communication, you can't look for what's not in it.
Assuming a neutral tone unless specified otherwise, it's always the best bet.
Also, as I've said before, improper grammar could also mean "I don't know the grammar of your language well enough", if I'm writing French, I make a lot of mistakes because I don't use it very often, so the tone is the last of my concerns and the people reading it could easily think it's from a 9 year old kid who hasn't finished primary school yet.
If you think that correct grammar is more than just "the proper way to use the language" you're most probably seeing too much into it.
> Imagine you're working with a new PM and he tells you the team's progress is 'acceptable.' What does that mean exactly?
it means "acceptable"
in a scale from 0 to 10 acceptable is >= 6 and < 7
but, when in doubt, ask, words are free.
I actually believe most writing is non-neutral in nature. Every word choice and sentence structure conveys meaning, intentional or not.
For example, why did Dante describe the sight of a lion as making "the air tremble" rather than cause "a stillness in the air"? Or a slightly more powerful variant, "a silence in the air"? My guess is that he wanted to call attention to how dominating the lion's presence was, that even the air was humbled/scared. That's how intimidating and commandeering the lion was. (Very intentional word choice here by me to pair with enraged!)
Maybe that's the wrong interpretation, but we also have people who study exactly this! The nuance of literary works and their meanings.
The article mentions a difference between 'lol' and 'haha' - if you boil it down, is that really so different from 'the air tremble' vs. 'a stillness in the air'? It's word choice again, ultimately.
> Also, as I've said before, improper grammar could also mean "I don't know the grammar of your language well enough", if I'm writing French, I make a lot of mistakes because I don't use it very often, so the tone is the last of my concerns and the people reading it could easily think it's from a 9 year old kid who hasn't finished primary school yet.
Maybe this is why we disagree - I believe that once relative fluency is assumed, tone becomes more important.
Mandarin is a great example here. Most people who are just starting to learn Mandarin focus on vocabulary, pronouns, etc. But once you get to a more advanced stage, it reveals a really unique twist.
Informal 'modal particles' [1] are optional in sentences but also can significantly change the mood. You'd never use them in formal writing (they're not exactly professional), but in practice people use them in everyday written communications. Interestingly enough, they're by default pronounced in a neutral tone but can also be inflected with more emotion even though Mandarin is already a tonal language.
English doesn't have modal particles, and the closest equivalent I've seen are these Gen Z Netiquettes (which aren't only for Gen Z as a few people have pointed out).
---
As an example:
1. 吃饭: eat food
2. 吃饭吧: eat food, we should (friendly but also commanding)
3. 吃饭吗: eat food, want to? (friendly but more suggestive)
---
In English, you could write it like this instead:
1. food
2. we should get food
3. want to get food?
---
But that's not exactly right, because Mandarin also has formal sentences for those forms:
1. 吃饭: eat food
2. 应该吃饭: should eat food
3. 要不要吃饭: want to eat food or not?
---
So closer parallels in English instead could be:
1. food
2. food :eyes_emoji: [2]
3. food? :drooling_face_emoji: [3]
---
And as the article mentions, you can even merge 2 modal particles into a new one that's equal to the combined mood of both. For extra nuance!
e.g. 吃饭了吗: eat food, have you already done it? (friendly)
I think there's some truth to the idea that emojis are a bit of madness (but are also here to stay), but I disagree that nuance doesn't exist in written communication. It's existed for hundreds of years already, as mentioned above in the Dante example. Emojis are just a modern-day version of nuance.
In your original post, you mention:
> Not doing it [capitalization] proves that people either don't care or don't know the basic rules of the language, which says a lot more than doing it properly.
The third (more charitable) possibility is that people are intentionally doing it for nuance. For example, I capitalize in formal emails with customers but use lowercase with friends. My guess is that most people I work with do the same, and more importantly know others are also aware of this.
So at work, I can either choose to treat my coworkers as closer to customers or closer to friends. You can likely guess what that means. (<-- another example of a short sentence where tone is lost - was I amused? condescending? factual? <spoiler> it was the first </spoiler>)
Lastly, while you may personally disagree with the existence of nuance, it's hard to deny that a large chunk of people do infer nuance from text - just looking at this HN thread alone! So the takeaway I'd lightly (and not firmly!) suggest again is that it's worth optimizing for others in certain situations even if it seems like madness.
[1] https://medium.com/@glossika/chinese-grammar-how-to-use-moda...
Neutral as "exactly what it says", not "without any inflection".
Tone in writing is conveyed through how sentences are formed, which forms you use, what kind of words you chose, how verbose/succint you are, etc.
Capitalization does not mean anything special, it's only a grammar rule used to separate sentences and make reading easier.
if someone thinks that not capitalizing sentences means being informal, why not write in plain incorrect English, or using some street slang, or communicate by sending memes, where is the limit?
English speakers make a lot of fuss around things that are common in many other languages.
Mandarin is one, Italian, my language, is another (we have modal particles too).
If you want to be formal there's a form called "dare del lei" ( address someone in the third person ), if you want (or can) be informal it is called "dare del tu" (address someone in the second person, the regular you)
> The third (more charitable) possibility is that people are intentionally doing it for nuance
> So at work, I can either choose to treat my coworkers as closer to customers or closer to friends
Which is a lot of effort for little gain, at the risk of sounding sloppy.
There are much better ways, like using "Hi Mark" instead of "Good morning Mr. Stuart"
> , it's hard to deny that a large chunk of people do infer nuance from text -
Agree, from text not from text structure.
Text can be formal, informal and every other degree in between.
Structure can only be right or wrong, style only good or not good.
norwegian nobel committee oslo on behalf of the bureau of liberal international the global federation of liberal political parties I have the honour to bring to your attention our support for the nomination organized by the drugs peace institute of senator leila de lima of the philippines embattled democratic leader and internationally recognised human rights defender for the prestigious nobel peace prize
this is a very formal text in a not very good style (wall of text / blob of words)
EDIT:
So closer parallels in English instead could be:
1. food
2. food :eyes_emoji: [2]
3. food? :drooling_face_emoji: [3]
---
My version.
Words are free, use them.
Emojis are not as universal as people think, do not translate linearly across cultures and are not as easy to type.
I wouldn't say "food" as a single word to mean "here's your food" not even to a dog.
Maybe I would if I was a caveman in a comic.