Re: thread titles (houses, high school, college)

[Towanda]

I am seeing a growing number of thread titles with proper names in lower case letters, such as one right now with "logan,clovis,tucumcari,portales" - no caps. Another with "dripping springs". All of those are proper names and should be capitalized.

Then I see a thread title with "ect" as part of the title. I assume the poster means "etc."

I would just like to remind everyone to take some care with your titles before you post them. They should be specific so everyone has a hint what your thread is about.

And proper names should be capitalized. It really makes things here look so much classier.

Thanks for any effort you can make.

[Lovehound]

All the years I've been on forums (at least a dozen) I've been trying to get people to use good thread titles, as a member, as a moderator. I've never been able to make any noticeable difference in posting title behavior. You get thread titles like "question?" or "need help," you get spelling mistakes, improper punctuation, incorrect or total lack of capitalization, titles that give no clue as to what the thread topic is.

I'm completely behind you in your desire to have good titles, but I think the typical forum people are either incapable or disinterested in cooperating. They do not understand that a good thread title will encourage the development of a good discussion.

You might have better luck simply editing in corrections yourself as a moderator. I'll be happily surprised if asking people to aspire to better titles will make any significant improvement.

[Lovehound]

By the way, along the same topic I sometimes find it difficult to believe the incredibly bad grammar, spelling, punctuation and capitalization in people's posts. And please note that I am not singling out CD. I'm referring to all forums all across the Internet. They're all the same.

I got all A and B grades in high school English, went on to attend and graduate college (UCLA) and worked my career as an engineer with mostly people with the same background. I'm used to seeing nit picking mistakes in my colleagues' writing, things that could have been perhaps slightly improved upon, but for the largest part written in reasonably good English. I'm used to reading books, newspapers and magazines with even better English, enforced by copy editors at the periodicals and publishing houses.

On Internet forums the story is quite different, with posts rife with all the things mentioned above: poor capitalization or even none at all, improper or missing punctuation, words capitalized that shouldn't be, proper nouns in lower case, totally creative (but incorrect) punctuation, and every kind of insult to the English language you could imagine.

I often attribute this poor English to laziness, but sometimes I wonder. Could it be that for the first time I'm seeing how ordinary, average people write? Could it be that a large part of them didn't even gain high school graduate proficiency? Or could they be rebelling against being forced to do better in school or face poor grades and ridicule? Or is it really laziness, that they could do better but don't care to make the effort?

I don't know if people are capable of doing better, or even if they really want to. All I know is that my using good English is comparable to my washing up, combing my hair, shaving and dressing neatly before I go out into public, to present a good public image. To me, making the effort to write using good English is important to my literary or written image, to be well received as the image of my Internet self.

I think it's either one of two things: either people are too lazy to use good English or they simply do not have the necessary skills and are writing the only way they know, writing poorly.

[catman]

My feeling is that they were probably too lazy to learn good English skills, so they don't have them. I don't mind a bit of colloquialism (doncha know), but sometimes it gets to the point where it's just too much work to try to figure out what the poster was trying to say. The confusion of there/their and it's/its drives me batty.

[Towanda]

Thanks for the comments, you guys. I am glad to know I am not the only person out here who is bothered by the decline in our language, spelling, and grammar....and most especially as it is used on internet postings.

I would like to see proper names capitalized, some care taken to spell things correctly, especially in the thread titles which are out there for the whole world to see ... and to me it reflects on how classy we want this site to be.

[Lovehound]

Originally Posted by Towanda

Thanks for the comments, you guys. I am glad to know I am not the only person out here who is bothered by the decline ... and most especially as it is used on internet postings.

I would like to see proper names capitalized...

You mean proper names like the Internet?

Hahahha! Gotcha good Towanda!

Truth be known, I can see a few mistakes in my own posts above but I still think I reach 99th percentile here at CD, and so do you.

By the way, the most often response to grammar criticisms is that the complainer usually gets nit picked to death, a death of a thousand proofreader's marks.

[Towanda]

Hmmmm. I have never used "internet" as a proper noun.

Or "e-mail" and "online" either.

If I am wrong I stand corrected.

[Towanda]

Looks like we both could be considered correct, Lovehound.

Internet capitalizations.

[Lovehound]

Your link didn't work for me.

There is only one Internet. That's a proper noun to me.

There are some who call smaller networks "internets" but most refer to those as "intranets."

[crazyme4878]

I think the majority of people know how to write, but on the internet, they don't re-read their posts before sending it through. There is definately a speed factor.

Lovehound's first post reminded me of one of my English professors. English is her second language, so she believes that all natives should have an excellent grasp on their own language. She actually corrects her colleagues' memos (including from the deans and from the president) and sends the corrected memo back to them!