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What's in a Letter?
Jan. 19th, 2005 02:37 pmSomehow, in the boredom of waiting for the timer to finish its timing run, I stumbled across a thread on Wikipedia dominated by the internet vs. Internet debate. I would say obviously some people need to find better things to do with their time, but I am apparently no better because I actually read through about half of it, by which time I had gone through several identical argument cycles (cycle where the same people make the same arguments as though they had not just been made at all); so I am no better.
I never even really thought of this as controversial. To me, you capitalize the Internet where we check our mail and browse the web every day, whereas I do not capitalize the internet of computers which sits behind my firewall at home operating semi-autonomously (many such internets exist). Apparently, however, it is controversial to some people.
So I ask the question: what is in a letter? According to Lynne Truss, in her book Eats, Shoots & Leaves about punctuation, she mentions that the word "I" in the English language was original capitalized to make it stick out and be more readable. The German language is infinitely more strait forward in its capitalization rules - all nouns are capitalized - and yet even there, there are some funny rules, Sie the formal form of you is capitalized, whereas du the informal you is not. Some languages don't even have capital letters! I wonder what they do with all the free time they have on their hands due to the near const absence of capitalization arguments.
What goes almost unnoticed in the discussion page of the Internet Wikipedia entry is that there is a whole section of the article which is blatantly biased, inappropriate and offensive; not to mention the fact that it violates the neutral point of view policy of the website. This is so typical of Internet discourse. People waste their time arguing the relative merits of emacs vs. vi (I use pico or nano instead, I don't think that harms anyone else) or who would win if the Enterprise took on an Imperial Star Destroyer (I am pretty sure both are fictional). Surprisingly enough, which type of ship would win usually has a lot to do with which one the author finds most aesthetically or artistically pleasing (ie. is a fan of).
It is so easy to forget that there are actual problems confronting our society. It isn't really an Internet phenomenon either. As a nation we were so caught up in the President's penis, and debating whether he should be impeached, that we totally didn't notice that the "bad guys" were sneaking up on us. Oops. Too political.
I never even really thought of this as controversial. To me, you capitalize the Internet where we check our mail and browse the web every day, whereas I do not capitalize the internet of computers which sits behind my firewall at home operating semi-autonomously (many such internets exist). Apparently, however, it is controversial to some people.
So I ask the question: what is in a letter? According to Lynne Truss, in her book Eats, Shoots & Leaves about punctuation, she mentions that the word "I" in the English language was original capitalized to make it stick out and be more readable. The German language is infinitely more strait forward in its capitalization rules - all nouns are capitalized - and yet even there, there are some funny rules, Sie the formal form of you is capitalized, whereas du the informal you is not. Some languages don't even have capital letters! I wonder what they do with all the free time they have on their hands due to the near const absence of capitalization arguments.
What goes almost unnoticed in the discussion page of the Internet Wikipedia entry is that there is a whole section of the article which is blatantly biased, inappropriate and offensive; not to mention the fact that it violates the neutral point of view policy of the website. This is so typical of Internet discourse. People waste their time arguing the relative merits of emacs vs. vi (I use pico or nano instead, I don't think that harms anyone else) or who would win if the Enterprise took on an Imperial Star Destroyer (I am pretty sure both are fictional). Surprisingly enough, which type of ship would win usually has a lot to do with which one the author finds most aesthetically or artistically pleasing (ie. is a fan of).
It is so easy to forget that there are actual problems confronting our society. It isn't really an Internet phenomenon either. As a nation we were so caught up in the President's penis, and debating whether he should be impeached, that we totally didn't notice that the "bad guys" were sneaking up on us. Oops. Too political.
