Why Not Type In All Caps?
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Learjeff Innis
musician & coder
Join date: 27 Nov 2006
Posts: 817
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02-12-2007 13:02
From: Aminom Marvin I read a post by someone who seemed to Capitalize Letters for completely Arbitrary Reasons. I still cannot Figure Out why this Poster Types like this. I don't know if this is that person's reason, but it's an archaic form to capitalize important words. It also used to be popular in advertising, until research showed that it annoyed the people reading the text. (On the other hand, other market research shows that certain anomalies cause us to linger longer on the text rather than giving up, such as serif vs. non-serif fonts -- so it's a fine line.)
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Sylvia Trilling
Flying Tribe
Join date: 2 Oct 2006
Posts: 1,117
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02-12-2007 13:12
Thank you, Mia. This would be a good sticky.
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Virrginia Tombola
Equestrienne
Join date: 10 Nov 2006
Posts: 938
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02-12-2007 13:27
From: Aminom Marvin I read a post by someone who seemed to Capitalize Letters for completely Arbitrary Reasons. I still cannot Figure Out why this Poster Types like this. I will confess to an Occasional Victorian Exuberance when I write copy for Items of Interest (perhaps to Myself, if Not Always the General Public). I must admit a certain Modern Soul who shares my Mortal Shell oft says to me, "Really, Miss Tombola, must you use that Blessed Shift Key with such Vigorous Zeal?" (save that she, unlike I, does not affect quite the Same Inflection). To which I reply, in the Mode of Jessica Rabbit, "I can not help it, for I am drawn that way."
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Prawnyloks Parker
"Prim Fiddler"
Join date: 6 Oct 2006
Posts: 420
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02-12-2007 14:11
All caps, capitalised sentences, no paragraphs etc, does make it a bit tricky to read, but...
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
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Winter Ventura
Eclectic Randomness
Join date: 18 Jul 2006
Posts: 2,579
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02-12-2007 14:28
i have this friend in real life she's a nice person a good mother and an intelligent woman but she has a problem she doesnt use punctuation or caps hardly ever in fact its sometimes very hard to follow the meaning in her emails and forum posts because it all runs together with a weird kind of urgency sure its all there in black and white for anyone to read or understand and yet just because of the lack of a few dots and squiggles it gets really hard to decipher fairly quickly she knows its a problem but for some reason she still does it
Of course, what's worse is the fact that she can't spell very well.
so it all begens too get reelie hard too understan what she is tlaking abowt when she asks me too take a look at the websight two see if i can make the logo bigger then it is now ocashionly she will make a publik anownsement to tell peple about a event that is aproching time may be of the esense she may need peple two sine up write away mabey with in a week befor the event
But the rules of writing don't matter... write?
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Daisy Rimbaud
Registered User
Join date: 12 Oct 2006
Posts: 764
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02-12-2007 15:12
From: Aminom Marvin I read a post by someone who seemed to Capitalize Letters for completely Arbitrary Reasons. I still cannot Figure Out why this Poster Types like this. There seem to be some people in the BDSM community who do this to create a sort of "Dom-speak". These "masters" are so terribly self-important that they have to Capitalize every other Word to show how Ineffably Important they are. Of course, to anyone normal they just end up sounding like pompous affected bores ...
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Molly MacKay
Registered User
Join date: 30 Jun 2006
Posts: 65
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02-12-2007 15:45
From: Mia Darracq TyPiNg In AlTeRnAtInG CaP lOwEr CaSe LeTtErS iS JuSt PlAiN UnReAdIBlE.  !ElBaDaErNu ErOm NeVe Si SrEtTeL eSaC rEwOl PaC gNiTaNrEtLa DrAwKcAb GnIpYt ,AiM oN
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Jesseaitui Petion
king of polynesia :P
Join date: 2 Jan 2006
Posts: 2,175
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02-12-2007 16:06
From: Elyse Gaspara im sorry i started this whole thing by being overexcited and using caps for my post about my new sim! Hey, it`s better than bashing someone elses sim I guess. *Cough*
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Angelique LaFollette
Registered User
Join date: 17 Jun 2004
Posts: 1,595
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02-12-2007 17:49
From: Mia Darracq So, saying all that, when I come across posts of people that type in one of the style of one of the three samples above, I usually skip them because they are just unreadable, and I don't have the time to try to decypher what they're trying to say.
I've read the statistics on how people read. You left out the part about how those who read using that pattern of recognition have a proportionately lower reading comprehension. That was one of the drawbacks in the new ways of teaching the written language. "Word recognition" and various other educational methods that teach seeing the word as a whole, like a pictorial representation, instead of reading the word "sounding it out"as being made up of parts. It's the difference between left and right brain usage. You have difficulty in reading unless the form adheres to a strict pattern, Given my rather "old school" style of education, i possess no such linguistic limitations. no matter how people type things, i have little trouble in deciphering it. Continue limiting yourself as you choose, but why advocate that others meet your limitations? What is next? Asking that we not use polysylables over a certain length because they take too long to read? What disturbs me most of all is this thread is the veiled digs at people of non English back grounds. Being an immigrant myself, i've been confronted with this before. In a discussion, someone cannot keep up with what is being said, so they begin mocking the other persons accent. It's been excused, or explained in a number of ways, but it always comes back to simple intolerance. I've taken a great deal of time to put this in a form that you will read. i can't however guarantee that you will understand it, i can only overcome so many of your limitations, the rest is up to you. I'll return to my old method of expressing myself now. Angel.
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Colette Meiji
Registered User
Join date: 25 Mar 2005
Posts: 15,556
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02-12-2007 17:59
From: Angelique LaFollette I've read the statistics on how people read. You left out the part about how those who read using that pattern of recognition have a proportionately lower reading comprehension. That was one of the drawbacks in the new ways of teaching the written language. "Word recognition" and various other educational methods that teach seeing the word as a whole, like a pictorial representation, instead of reading the word "sounding it out"as being made up of parts. It's the difference between left and right brain usage.
You have difficulty in reading unless the form adheres to a strict pattern, Given my rather "old school" style of education, i possess no such linguistic limitations. no matter how people type things, i have little trouble in deciphering it.
Continue limiting yourself as you choose, but why advocate that others meet your limitations? What is next? Asking that we not use polysylables over a certain length because they take too long to read?
I prefer content over form, you learn more that way.
Angel. This , I find interesting. However teaching people over 18 (many over 30) to change the way they read seems difficult at best. While accomidating for a sizable chunk of people who read based on word structures seems more readily beneficial. From thinking on this , I have no clue which way I read from how you and the OP's comments. However I do seem to read better when there is a easy to read font , letters big enough to make out clearly, and a good contrast between letters and the background. Even if there are some people who receive no benefit from easily legible text - most will.
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Maggie McArdle
FIOS hates puppies
Join date: 8 May 2006
Posts: 2,855
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02-12-2007 18:17
From: Colette Meiji IDUNNOSOMEHOWITHINKTYPINGINALLCAPSMAKESTYPINGEASIERSINCEYOUDONTNEEDTOBOTHERWITHALLTHISSHIFTSTUFFALSOLEAVINGOUTSPACESANDPERIODSANDSTUFFSAVESTIMETOOIGUESSITSHARDERTOREADBUTWHOCARESIMTYPINGITNOTREADINGITNOWMAYBESOMEONESHOULDADRESSTHEISSUEOFPEOPLEWHOLIKETOSPAMALLINCAPSBECUASEOFTHEIRWOOTCLUBORWHATEVERBUTNORMALLYSPEAKLIKEEVERYONEELSEISNTTHATLIKEHYPOCRYTICALORDOTHEYJUSTLOSEENSIUSMWHENNOTALKINGABOUTHEIRAWESOMEPLACETOPARTYWOOTANDSTUFF. @_@!!!!!! side note: i read this entire post. now i have a headache.
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Wilhelm Neumann
Runs with Crayons
Join date: 20 Apr 2006
Posts: 2,204
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02-12-2007 19:05
From: Colette Meiji This , I find interesting.
However teaching people over 18 (many over 30) to change the way they read seems difficult at best. While accomidating for a sizable chunk of people who read based on word structures seems more readily beneficial.
From thinking on this , I have no clue which way I read from how you and the OP's comments. However I do seem to read better when there is a easy to read font , letters big enough to make out clearly, and a good contrast between letters and the background.
Even if there are some people who receive no benefit from easily legible text - most will. hehe unfortunately we are talking about the masses and I dont use word recognition but I really hate working hard to read a post it seems illogical to me. Also since I am older and my vision sucks more I am able to read less of this jumbled up stuff why should i get a headache while reading some guys information also realize I can't read a telephone book cause of the print size so why make it hard for people when in fact is that the idea behind a post (i would think) is to get the most people to read it the fastest they can and not get frustrated. I used to be one that typed in all caps by the way but it was affecting people (at the time i was well 30 13 years ago.. eep hehe and the net was younger and so was I) so I changed I saw no reason to make others uncomfortable. I dont think peopel should be wierd about every period being in place and all the t's crossed and i's dotted type stuff that is overboard, but people can at least type it in such a way that its easy on the eyeballs and easy on the brain. But then some of us worry about making sure our message gets across others dont care I guess I dont know but if people start screaming and all at once then you would think its a problem that is affecting the majority and not the minority hehe.
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Prospero Frobozz
Astronerd
Join date: 10 Feb 2006
Posts: 164
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02-12-2007 19:27
From: Aminom Marvin I read a post by someone who seemed to Capitalize Letters for completely Arbitrary Reasons. I still cannot Figure Out why this Poster Types like this. Probably just too much reading of the US Declaration of Independence and other documents from the era....
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Kidd Krasner
Registered User
Join date: 1 Jan 2007
Posts: 1,938
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02-12-2007 21:36
From: Angelique LaFollette I've read the statistics on how people read. You left out the part about how those who read using that pattern of recognition have a proportionately lower reading comprehension. That was one of the drawbacks in the new ways of teaching the written language. "Word recognition" and various other educational methods that teach seeing the word as a whole, like a pictorial representation, instead of reading the word "sounding it out"as being made up of parts. It's the difference between left and right brain usage.
Do you have a citation? My first reaction is that you're mixing up the teaching techniques with the reading process. As far as I know, the observation that people read in chunks has nothing to do with the way they were taught. It's simply the way the reading skill works after one becomes proficient, whether one learned phonics or whole language. Indeed, reading comprehension is one of the methods use to evaluate these questions. Such studies may summarize their conclusion by saying "x is better than y for reading", when what they really mean is "reading comprehension is better with x than y." Or they'll discover that the comprehension question is moot. See, for example, Effects of Case Format on Email Readability, which concludes that the difference is in reading speed and subjective reaction, not comprehension.
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Angelique LaFollette
Registered User
Join date: 17 Jun 2004
Posts: 1,595
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02-12-2007 22:46
From: Kidd Krasner Do you have a citation? My first reaction is that you're mixing up the teaching techniques with the reading process. As far as I know, the observation that people read in chunks has nothing to do with the way they were taught. It's simply the way the reading skill works after one becomes proficient, whether one learned phonics or whole language. Indeed, reading comprehension is one of the methods use to evaluate these questions. Such studies may summarize their conclusion by saying "x is better than y for reading", when what they really mean is "reading comprehension is better with x than y." Or they'll discover that the comprehension question is moot. See, for example, Effects of Case Format on Email Readability, which concludes that the difference is in reading speed and subjective reaction, not comprehension. You cannot really seperate Teaching technique from the way people read as people are Taught to read, they are not born with the innate knowledge of it. No, the problem with comprehension arises when a person recognizes the first and last part of a word, coupled with general size, and thier mind fills in the rest of the word Incorrectly. Not so common with mono, and duosylabic structures, but the more complex the word, the more Flash errors are made, and comprehension decreases. Older persons, who were taught reading in a Different Fashion Predating the "Write first, Right Later" method of teaching spelling have a tendency to clearly enunciate in thier minds the word before assigning meaning to it. The article i read on the Phenomenon did site some differences in method due to age, and educational style. (Believe the article was in "Psychology Today" but i do not remember what year.) I should have mentioned before, In regard to Prawnyloks Post: From: someone Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. When reading his post, Due to the difference in the way i learned reading, I found my eyes skipping over each letter in his words, and my Mind reassembling them in thier correct order (My mind probably continued to Transpose I's and E's as this is One of a few finer points of English spelling that still give me trouble after all these years). I did not have a direct flow of reading as though i were reading my own (Questionably spelled) writing. My Mind did Not immediately recognize the words, It, in essence had to Translate each one. It did so rapidly, But the Decoding was still necesary. As best i can tell, My eyes were Moving forward three words, then Reading Backwards Two. That was the Physical sensation at any rate. My mind wouldn't accept the distorted spellings, and it had to sort them out. But then, I wasn't taught to read words as Picture Patterns. I was taught to Spell them out, and in Pronunciation, Sound them out letter by letter. In the case of reading, i don't think you can completely seperate Teaching from Practice. Angel.
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Daisy Rimbaud
Registered User
Join date: 12 Oct 2006
Posts: 764
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02-12-2007 22:52
From: Angelique LaFollette What disturbs me most of all is this thread is the veiled digs at people of non English back grounds. Being an immigrant myself, i've been confronted with this before. In a discussion, someone cannot keep up with what is being said, so they begin mocking the other persons accent. It's been excused, or explained in a number of ways, but it always comes back to simple intolerance.
I don't really think that is relevant here. No-one is being mocked for poor grammar or spelling or using the wrong words, which are the usual problems for people for whom English is a second or third language. The only language I can think of that uses a written alphabet and departs significantly from the others in terms of capitalization conventions is German, and I never yet met a German who had any difficulty in remembering not to capitalise every noun in English. !werbeH ni epyt ot evah t'nod uoy dalg eb tsuJ
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Wilhelm Neumann
Runs with Crayons
Join date: 20 Apr 2006
Posts: 2,204
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02-12-2007 22:56
From: Daisy Rimbaud
!werbeH ni epyt ot evah t'nod uoy dalg eb tsuJ
hehe first language was hebrew shoulda seen my with books switching back and forth between herbew and english to this day if i start writing something in herbrew when i switch back to english my e's are flipped and my y's are flipped you would swear i was dyslexic, but i'm not.. sorry i actualy read that 
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Cherry Czervik
Came To Her Senses
Join date: 18 Feb 2006
Posts: 3,680
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02-13-2007 04:41
From: Mia Darracq I know that I'm answering my own question, but hopefully this will stop some of the complaining, and help people realize why people complain about posts created in ALL CAPS, or other non standard English typing style.
When we read, we do not read individual letters, we read more the shape of words, not what letters the words are made up of. Most reading we do is written in lower case letters, so that's what our brain recognizes quickly.
So When You Type Paragraphs, Capitalizing The First Letter Of Each Word It Lowers The Readability Of The Paragraph, And Lowers Our Reading Speed By Probably 25%.
TYPING IN ALL CAPS LOWERS READING SPEED BY 40-50%.
TyPiNg In AlTeRnAtInG CaP lOwEr CaSe LeTtErS iS JuSt PlAiN UnReAdIBlE.
So, saying all that, when I come across posts of people that type in one of the style of one of the three samples above, I usually skip them because they are just unreadable, and I don't have the time to try to decypher what they're trying to say. Well said, LOL. Having said that, I speed read at a stupidly fast rate, often chunks of text in a glance rather than word at a time and I found that I could read all of that just fine. Can read upside down, backwards, and upside down and backwards at speed too - but I am just freaky  The real reason not to type all in caps is that it makes you look like a moron 
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Molly MacKay
Registered User
Join date: 30 Jun 2006
Posts: 65
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02-13-2007 04:47
I'm A Moron! Yay!!! :d
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Rihanna Laasonen
Registered User
Join date: 22 Nov 2006
Posts: 287
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02-13-2007 07:15
From: Angelique LaFollette Continue limiting yourself as you choose, but why advocate that others meet your limitations? Because the purpose of communicating is to communicate. With others. It doesn't matter whether it's capitalization, punctuation, spelling, grammar, or syntax, that's why all the rules of language develop, and our current rules developed and stabilized long before they stopped teaching phonics as the default. For right or wrong, using incorrect capitalization makes it harder to comprehend your words, not just for a few people with a visual dysfunction but for huge swaths of readers. It impedes communication. Maybe you, Angel, are happy communicating with only a limited subset of the forum readers. For myself, I like writing and reading long posts and tend to assume that people who complain about long posts have insect attention spans and thus aren't my target audience anyway. But I think there are a lot of other folk out there who don't realize they're losing half or more of their audience when they don't use standard English. I was taught with phonics, and I don't have a hugely hard time reading misplaced caps (all caps is another story). However, I am an editor, so they still make me want to strangle the writer. The occasional Victorian Ebullience doesn't bother me, "Domspeak" doesn't bother me since it follows its own rules, and I probably wouldn't even mind your capitalization if I could figure out (or you could explain) what pattern it follows. But as long as it seems random, I'm going to automatically discount anything it says. And your meaning (back to the generic "you" here) will have to be that much stronger on its own to get through that automatic disrespect. Because reading comprehension aside, using nonstandard English is the literary and Internet equivalent of going downtown with dirty hair, your shirt half-tucked, your laces untied, and your zipper down. If people don't care what others think of them in RL, fine. But what readers think of you affects your ability to communicate with them. And if people don't care about communicating with others, why post to a forum anyway?
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Gummi Richthofen
Fetish's Frasier Crane!
Join date: 3 Oct 2006
Posts: 605
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02-13-2007 07:32
From: Ashlee Martin Are you nuts? Why would you read so much into how people type? Just read it, sheesh. Can you deesiifer this? If not, just skip my post. You have this back-assward. It's not the reader who has to justify their choice, it's the writer. When you write something, you try to reach an audience. The harder you make it to decipher, the fewer people can be bothered with it, or you. The original rules for typography were more or less figured out by the London Times - that's why so many typefaces are called "times" this or "times" that. Fundamental human limits on perception and processing govern typography - 5 or 6 words a line improves reading speed (which is why the Times uses narrow columns, and all other papers have followed suit), and serifs on letters improves it even more (which is why responsible designers who are not just jacking off, only use san-serif fonts for HEADLINES). If you insist on writing in a different way, then basically you are trying to reach a species other then the one I'm in. And yes, I know, that's a preposition. Hey, I'm a writer, not a sub-editor.
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Gummi Richthofen
Fetish's Frasier Crane!
Join date: 3 Oct 2006
Posts: 605
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02-13-2007 07:42
From: Rihanna Laasonen Because reading comprehension aside, using nonstandard English is the literary and Internet equivalent of going downtown with dirty hair, your shirt half-tucked, your laces untied, and your zipper down. If people don't care what others think of them in RL, fine. But what readers think of you affects your ability to communicate with them. And if people don't care about communicating with others, why post to a forum anyway? You're missing the point - somewhat. Yes, well controlled language works because it is streamlined - the result of a lot of forced evolution. However, many studies of different social groups and even language differences between genders and races are beginning to reveal that the part of the language that carries the message, can vary enormously from group to group. People like you and me are component-ists, or literal-ists, or lego-block types - call us what you will. For us, each word has it's use, and each rule, too. However, we are not the only type. There are other types where the deviation from our WASP english is pretty much a badge of the subculture in question - not just Angelique's Pointless IRC Capitals, but things like the black american "aks" for "ask", Bush-Texan "nucular", or english subcultural "innit" are all examples of words or systems which to us are rule-breakers - but not to their presenters. Personally, I can't abide "LOL" in forums, mails or IM's - for some odd reason, it always comes across as the opposite of a genuine laugh. Laughs are plosive, almost involuntary - to me, "lol" or worse stil "lololol" is drooling, downbeat, and pathetic. However, a bit like the Dom Capitals Silliness, I've had to acknolwedget hat some people use that as their expression, just as some other people use whole emotional states to reflect their view of the world around them. It would be foolish to claim that there is only one true way...
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Regan Turas
Token Main
Join date: 21 Oct 2006
Posts: 274
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02-13-2007 08:03
From: Angelique LaFollette That was one of the drawbacks in the new ways of teaching the written language. "Word recognition" and various other educational methods that teach seeing the word as a whole, like a pictorial representation, instead of reading the word "sounding it out"as being made up of parts. I have no idea when that particular teaching technique was introduced into American school systems, but it was definitely after my elementary schools years in the 1960's. The "sounding it out" part sounds very familiar, insofar as any particular approach was used at all. Mostly we just stood up and read outloud until we were told to sit down. What I remember is that one moment of clarity when "Look, Jane, look" clicked and I saw the connection between words and thoughts. I was off and running and never looked back.
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Rihanna Laasonen
Registered User
Join date: 22 Nov 2006
Posts: 287
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02-13-2007 08:09
From: Gummi Richthofen You're missing the point - somewhat. Yes, well controlled language works because it is streamlined - the result of a lot of forced evolution. Okay, this was interesting but I'm not sure what its point is, no. *g* Especially since your post right above it says the same thing I was saying (only more concisely). What was the earlier point you think I'm missing? Subculture dialects and whatnot aren't rulebreakers; they just have their own rules. I've never denied that (just the opposite, if you reread my post). But that doesn't change the fact that using those other systems in places where they are not the norm impedes communication, and people who use them need to be aware of that. Since this is an official forum for everyone, the official standard English will be the norm. I may use "y'all" when speaking casually and on my blog, but not when I'm in a job interview. And I'm not going to use it on a forum unless I have reason to believe that, for that particular post, the badge identification outweighs the impeded communication. And to carry out the metaphor -- someone may wear "gangsta clothes" when hanging out with his friends, but if he wears them to a job interview as an accountant, well, the guy wearing the business suit is more likely to get the job. Because the interviewer -- and the reader -- may not be able to tell whether he doesn't know the rules or knows but doesn't care, but we know it's one of the two. And I really want to know what a sub-editor is. *g*
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Isablan Neva
Mystic
Join date: 27 Nov 2004
Posts: 2,907
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02-13-2007 08:21
From: Rihanna Laasonen And I really want to know what a sub-editor is. *g* "Sub-editor" = submissive with a major in English. "Master, you might wish to edit your forum post. It is pure flamebait." 
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