Why do people put spaces before punctuation and capitalize random words in sentences?

reply to post by GD21D


You make some good points but there are issues.

It is commonplace nowadays, at least in my travels, to find atrocious spelling, grammar, etc, just about anywhere.

I cannot find a CNN article which expresses 100% correct English.
I remember my professors in college making common mistakes as well.
And I see it on TV, on roadsigns, or even goverment documents.

So we cannot judge credibility based on this factor alone as it is far too commonplace and indeterminate.

reply to post by Nanocyte

I think capitalizing is just a way to emphasize or to highlight certain words and also to make it appear LOUDER than the rest of the sentences....The Spacing also has similar effects and makes a word to stand out from the rest.....But I could be wrong,as English is my second language.

reply to post by MrNobody777

I dont know why people do this, i think it is just an affect of people using smartphones and such. But, there is something called Covert hypnosis where you can use techniques, like capitalizing words to send messages to the unconscious mind. For instance, if i where to capitalize these words: SCRATCH YOUR NOSE, and put them in a sentence, chances are that your gonna scratch your nose while reading it.

You are correct. I am currently in my last year of a masters in psychotherapy.. A big part of it is using hypnosis and hypnotherapy.
Hypnotic techniques are used on us on a daily basis, they are designed to by pass certain filters in our conscious mind and head directly to the sub conscious. Mostly they are harmless and pretty obvious when you look at them consciously, but they are still used to to influence our mind and behavior. Advertising being the worst culprit.
Showing us words in capital letters is one of these methods used. For example when you see the word STOP! in capital letters.. It will cause an unconscious reaction to the seeing word, which will vary from person to person.
Although I have seen it quite a lot here in terms of trying to influence someone, people will also use this to express certain emotions.

Generally I think the specific errors the OP is talking about here is because people are using smartphones to post more these days. They are sometimes a nightmare to use and make it easy to make certain and repeated mistakes. It is very easy to make mistakes when posting long text in a hurry using a phone.
I've personally had both annoyances pointed out by the op, Capitalizing certain letters so it looks odd is common thing that happens and the comma thing has happened many times before aswell.
Because our mind doesn't actually read the words buts recognizes the pattern of the words when reading, I suspect this disrupts the natural patterns the OP has learned and uses, which in turn causes a negative reaction in the OP because of this. Annoyance or a subtle emotion of anger, writing a post about it is a way of venting that anger.

If anyone does feel this emotion when seeing a spelling or grammar mistake, just recognize it, tell yourself it doesn't affect you directly or the way you live your life and move on. There are a lot more important things to be worrying about in life.

Disclaimer: I am using a smartphone to post, any mistakes in grammar or spelling, apologies now.. please don't get all anal about it.

Actually my point exactly above. I did make many mistakes which was because i'm in a rush, using a smartphone and it was quite a long post, for a device with such a small screen..

I say we BAN the use of smartphones on ATS!

Originally posted by muzzleflash
reply to post by GD21D

 

You make some good points but there are issues.

It is commonplace nowadays, at least in my travels, to find atrocious spelling, grammar, etc, just about anywhere.

I cannot find a CNN article which expresses 100% correct English.
I remember my professors in college making common mistakes as well.
And I see it on TV, on roadsigns, or even goverment documents.

So we cannot judge credibility based on this factor alone as it is far too commonplace and indeterminate.

I wholeheartedly agree. I've seen plenty of grammatical errors in newspapers, online commentary, and everything in between. To the point of just reading an article headline with a blatant grammatical error and wondering who was the editor for this piece?I cannot even claim to have pristine writing capability myself. I'm sure there are many errors in my own commentary that I'm not even aware of. No matter how hard we try we all make mistakes from time to time, or even in some cases may not even be aware of our own grammatical mistakes.My point of contention still remains. Where main stream outlets can fall back on their "official" nature to overcome minor grammatical infractions. We, as a community, stuck in the information ghetto are afforded no such luxury.

reply to post by misscurious


I think you´re absoluty right and thanks for explaning my point in a much better way than i did

reply to post by misscurious


Epic post on a smart phone! ( surely would have met the approval of op! )

How's the thumbs?

Nothing Is More Annoying Than When People Type Like This Though. I have a lot of pet peeves when it comes to typing, and Facebook really brings them out. Another fairly common one is when people replace all commas or full stops with ellipses, or when people use incorrect phrases like "I could care less". Don't even get me started on "their", "they're", "there", "your", "you're", "they're", "their" and "there".

I'm a very irritable person...

reply to post by Nanocyte


I think alot of users on forum sites or social sites are approaching the computer as a place of convergence not a literary dumping ground,by this I mean from the approach of a "face to face" conversation. Talking in person you would emphasize words with volume. So you "Cap" the whole word or parts of it for emotional emphasis! I am guilty of it and was careful to not do it in this post!

reply to post by Nanocyte


I don't think so, A foreign student is usually better in English than some native English speakers(other than talking of course). English is taught in foreign countries by well educated English professor, compared to a some undereducated parents or the slangs that passed down in the family/neighbourhood/state.

I'm not sure about space before a punctuation, maybe because i have not seen many but i would assume, its a mind think.. where the mind assume, anything after a click on the keyboard requires a space.

But for capitalization... i don;t think many are taught properly, and im guilt of using it... mainly when i emphasize on something.. even if it doesn't need a capital, i'll do it anyway...well my mind does.. example... "i think Some body did it"

Thanks for the responses!

Now that I've read some of your explanations and looked into it a bit more, smart phone usage would seem to be the main culprit. I'm still using a Blackberry from a few years ago, and I never use autocorrect (older Blackberries kind of make it a pain in the ass to select anything, so autocorrect just serves as a source of frustration), but now that I understand how it typically works, I imagine it would contribute greatly to this trend.

Here's an interesting article on other possible causes of the punctuation thing, for anyone who may be interested:

grammar.quickanddirtytips.com...

Shapur - Regarding capitalization, although entire words are sometimes capitalized for emphasis (especially online, when other formatting options are limited), it is generally considered incorrect to capitalize the first letter of a word that wouldn't ordinarily be capitalized simply to provide emphasis. It's not always improper, though. Here's another link I found explaining in a bit more detail:

grammar.quickanddirtytips.com...

(I'm not trying to be hard on you, by the way. I'm usually extremely self-conscious when writing in another language [or trying to, at least].)

reply to post by SpearMint


"I could care less" is actually kind of interesting. I found an article when I was looking into its origins a while ago:

www.worldwidewords.org...

The gist of it is that, rather than taking the dropped negative form of the phrase literally, in which case it obviously doesn't make sense and seems like a careless bastardization of the original phrase, if you think about the intonation and stress patterns, it can be understood as saying something like, "As if I could care less". It's pretty short and worth the read if you're interested.

Originally posted by Nanocyte
reply to post by SpearMint

 

"I could care less" is actually kind of interesting. I found an article when I was looking into its origins a while ago:

www.worldwidewords.org...

The gist of it is that, rather than taking the dropped negative form of the phrase literally, in which case it obviously doesn't make sense and seems like a careless bastardization of the original phrase, if you think about the intonation and stress patterns, it can be understood as saying something like, "As if I could care less". It's pretty short and worth the read if you're interested.

edit on 17-1-2013 by Nanocyte because: (no reason given)

Interesting, but I think usually when the term is used it is a careless bastardization of the original phrase rather than this. Thanks for the link.

reply to post by Nanocyte

Originally posted by Nanocyte

"I could care less" is actually kind of interesting. I found an article when I was looking into its origins a while ago:

www.worldwidewords.org...

The gist of it is that, rather than taking the dropped negative form of the phrase literally, in which case it obviously doesn't make sense and seems like a careless bastardization of the original phrase, if you think about the intonation and stress patterns, it can be understood as saying something like, "As if I could care less". It's pretty short and worth the read if you're interested.

Regardless of the reasoning behind it, the phrase rarely makes sense. Repetition is reason why it is so commonly misused in that manner. If people would take a brief moment to think about what they're typing, instead of just repeating others, the phrase would not be so common.







reply to post by Timely

Originally posted by Timely

( Oh, by the way, [color=E0B169]you should not use a comma before the word 'and'. )

When to Use a Comma before "And"

[color=E0B169]Two specific situations call for the use of a comma before "and."

The first is created when we have three or more items in a series. This mark of punctuation is called the serial comma.

The second situation occurs when "and" is being used to coordinate two independent clauses. An independent clause—also known as a main clause—is a group of words that has a subject and a verb and can stand alone as a sentence.

www.getitwriteonline.com...

reply to post by internationalcriminal

Originally posted by internationalcriminal
reply to post by Nanocyte

 

By the way, your phrase "Chances are..." was used completely correctly, pay no attention to the member that told you otherwise!

Maybe YOU should pay attention to the members though, because my reply regarding the 'chances are....' comment, was to a different member.

Regardless of that↑ however, I didn't say that it was used incorrectly. I said that it is a meaningless phrase. It does not matter whether or not it was used correctly, because it still remains meaningless either way.

reply to post by SpearMint

Their we go...Their's no reason,to so much upsets over some no, importance..I think's your over reactoring.

Originally posted by misscurious

The answer to your question is smart phones..

How delightfully ironic.

reply to post by misscurious


Maybe this is real language...


I think we've all been deceived

reply to post by Nanocyte


I'm one of the people who capitalizes random words and I use what may be called "creative language."

It's to POINT out certain things to get you to think more closely to how I'm thinking, because you can't see my inflection, volume, or body language..

Sometimes I put question marks a little past the sentence to make people Stop, on the question..

Is that Weird ...?? (It shows how long I want you to think about it.)

These are My, choices to make.

Tablets and smart phones are a big part of it, for sure. I make a ton of mistakes now that there's no physical keyboard on anything but my PC. Also, none of these touch screen devices have arrow keys, to scroll back to correct something. You have to try to touch an exact point in your paragraph, which looks like it was written in 6pt font.

I think some of it is due to the modern way of teaching...At a parent/teacher meeting my

daughter asked the teacher why her daughters work was not 'properly' marked, and was

informed that 'it would destroy the pupils confidence if there were too many corrections

to their work!