Comments on: Imagine a World Where Everyone Typed in CAPS LOCK

By: Razib Khan

Razib Khan — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:47:01 +0000

lol

By: DamnYankees

DamnYankees — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 22:43:37 +0000

“… I think you’re taking a light hearted column too seriously.”

I pivoted to lightheartedness with the word spacing thing!

“My quick reading of wikipedia suggests that this is wrong. The Samaritans had lower case letters and some Greek texts dated to 835 also had lower case letters.”

I assume Sean is talking about the Latin alphabet.

By: Charon

Charon — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 21:15:12 +0000

835 is after Charlemagne (and Alcuin). (I’m assuming you mean 835 CE, since you didn’t say BCE.)

Although I would be curious when Greek lowercase came about… their lowercase letters are more distinct from Latin characters than the uppercase.

By: Craig

Craig — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 20:46:38 +0000

My quick reading of wikipedia suggests that this is wrong. The Samaritans had lower case letters and some Greek texts dated to 835 also had lower case letters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_case#History
This could be wrong too I suppose.

By: spyder

spyder — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 20:43:18 +0000

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? WHAT ABOUT NOW??

By: hmm

hmm — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 19:50:46 +0000

“If there were no lower case, you wouldn’t see all caps as ranting.”

“Pretty easily, actually. I can write in two alphabets which don’t have the upper/lower case division, and it’s not really hard at all.”

… I think you’re taking a light hearted column too seriously.

By: Blake Stacey

Blake Stacey — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 19:23:17 +0000

medieval word problems were more colorful than those we have today

Oh, I dunno. Apparently, Feynman used to give his mathematical-methods class at Cornell word problems which began like, "Consider an atomic bomb of radius r, density of neutrons n . . ." That would wake me up at the start of the exam period.

By: DamnYankees

DamnYankees — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 18:40:44 +0000

Pretty easily, actually. I can write in two alphabets which don’t have the upper/lower case division, and it’s not really hard at all.

The real guy we need to thank is the guy who invented putting spaces in between word. That’s still a problem with Chinese for crying out loud!

By: Lonely Flower

Lonely Flower — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 18:08:26 +0000

I think it is a matter of get used to it. If there were no lower case, you wouldn’t see all caps as ranting.
In Arabic for example, there is no lower case letters, but I don’t know how we rant, may be we use English:)

By: Matt T

Matt T — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 17:43:02 +0000

I’ve had to adapt to all caps while writing, as my hand writing is horrible. I doubt that any one assumes that I am ranting, but I’m very sure that my hand writing doesn’t sound like I’m ranting. Letters on a page, either lower or upper case, rarely make a noise.

By: Buffalodavid

Buffalodavid — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 16:52:12 +0000

Sure, lower case is good, but the real fun starts with italics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italic_type

Ship and Dinosaur names, Latin phrases , and my favorite : Emphasis.