<story><title>Gen Z Netiquettes</title><url>https://manyonepercents.substack.com/p/productive-online-communication-gen-z</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>flumpcakes</author><text>&amp;gt; 9. Capitalizing the first letter in a sentence will reveal where you are&lt;p&gt;This one really surprises me, if someone contacted me without bothering to type a proper sentence I would just think they&amp;#x27;re an idiot. Everyone I know &lt;i&gt;always&lt;/i&gt; starts a sentence with a capital letter, no matter the platform. They all know how to use the shift key.&lt;p&gt;This isn&amp;#x27;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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>csydas</author><text>I think you&amp;#x27;re being overly harsh on this when it comes to informal communication.&lt;p&gt;As others pointed out, capitalization is similar to white space, punctuation, and other tools that English has when it comes to informal communication.&lt;p&gt;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:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The Customer is always right, so we need to work to correct this&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;thE CUsTomer iS aLWays RIght, So WE neEd To WoRK To cOrrECT thiS&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;the customer is always right, so we need to work to correct this :))))&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The first is quite formal and it&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;The third introduces the sarcastic smiley (I disagree with the article&amp;#x27;s interpretation, as I&amp;#x27;ve always seen :))) to more represent desperation or exasperation)&lt;p&gt;With traditional rules of English, tone is difficult to convey with a single sentence and it&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x2F;intention as chats can be very fast and disconnected, and it&amp;#x27;s hard to follow the attitude and mood of a person to understand their intended messaging.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x2F;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.&lt;p&gt;The evolution of chat might be bastardizing the classic rules of English, but it&amp;#x27;s quite expressive and personally has made many conversations and relationships much easier with fewer misunderstandings.</text></comment>
<story><title>Gen Z Netiquettes</title><url>https://manyonepercents.substack.com/p/productive-online-communication-gen-z</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>flumpcakes</author><text>&amp;gt; 9. Capitalizing the first letter in a sentence will reveal where you are&lt;p&gt;This one really surprises me, if someone contacted me without bothering to type a proper sentence I would just think they&amp;#x27;re an idiot. Everyone I know &lt;i&gt;always&lt;/i&gt; starts a sentence with a capital letter, no matter the platform. They all know how to use the shift key.&lt;p&gt;This isn&amp;#x27;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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>skupig</author><text>This seems like a very effective way to dismiss people that don&amp;#x27;t share your background. Also, not speaking basic English does not make one an idiot, there are actually quite a few other languages in the world.</text></comment>