[asterisk-biz] Capitalisation in English writing from Indian subcontinent

[Josh Horton]

Beat The Dead Horse :-)




On Oct 8, 2009, at 2:24 PM, SIP <sip at arcdiv.com> wrote:

> Alex Balashov wrote:
>> Geraint Lee wrote:
>>
>>
>>> no conclusions seem to have been drawn from the original
>>> question/observation though!
>>>
>>
>> I was just about to say the same thing.
>>
>>
>>> and yes i have noticed random
>>> capitalisation in the past just ignored it and carried on with life,
>>> after all, it's not like it takes any meaning away from what's  
>>> been written.
>>>
>>
>> Depending on who is doing the reading, it can communicate the  
>> impression
>> of an amateur, fly-by-night operation and negatively impact business.
>>
>> But that is beside the point of this thread;  as I said to Jai, I  
>> am not
>> expressing an "opinion" here - plenty of other threads have seen that
>> already.
>>
>> What I do find surprising is that nobody has found this phenomenon
>> curious enough to raise the topic before.  It's quite conspicuous,  
>> and
>> thus piques my curiosity.
>>
>>
>
> To be perfectly honest, I think the consistency you've heretofore seen
> has been simply because of a consistency in its use by some writers
> common to the forum. Whether by misunderstanding or by simply a desire
> for visual emphasis (there is so little one can do to emphasise
> straight, unformatted text) of certain key words or terms that those
> writers feel to be important. I've seen somewhat random, and haphazard
> capitalisation from a variety of 'native' English speakers here in the
> US time and time again, and it often boils down to preference. It's
> often a learned affectation, in imitation of someone they've seen do  
> the
> very same thing. I would find it incredibly difficult to believe that
> there's some standardisation of improper capitalisation that stems  
> from
> former British colonies and their understanding of English.
>
> If public school taught me one thing it's that people who grow up in  
> the
> UK and people who grow up in the US are by no means an adequate
> barometer of acceptable grammar, spelling, punctuation, or  
> capitalisation.
>
> But then, having two English professors for parents, there were often
> great wars fought over the dinner table as to whether or not English
> should be a descriptive or a prescriptive language. I have a bad habit
> of subconsciously and immediately judging someone who uses poor  
> grammar
> or spelling (in a manner consistent with a lack of understanding as
> opposed to simple typos), but if that were my only barometer for  
> dealing
> with a company, there would be few companies with which I would bother
> dealing. My father, quick to defend the descriptive camp, would argue
> that such a thing goes against the idea of language, and that language
> itself is there for accepted communication. As long as both parties  
> can
> agree that an idea has been conveyed properly and appropriately, the
> basic rules of grammar, spelling, punctuation, and capitalisation need
> not be as strict as I might want them.
>
> Some Asian languages have NO capitalisation whatsoever.  Japanese, for
> instance, has no capitalisation or even spacing, preferring to rely on
> interspersed differentiation of syllabaries in order to break up a
> sentence into something meaningful. It's sometimes difficult to teach
> someone coming from such a tradition to understand why he sees random
> capitalisation on the Internet, in advertising copy, in newspapers,
> etc.  Knowing this, I'm often somewhat lenient when I read what is
> written by non-native speakers, as I know the important part is to
> convey the information. If they're making an honest effort to convey
> information, they are, in essence, speaking the same language as I.
>
> It is readily apparent, however, when someone is NOT interested in
> making an effort to convey information. And those are the missives I
> find suspect. Those are the emails on the list that, to me, scream
> 'scam.'   The emails from Jai, Rehan, and dozens of other non-native
> speakers that you occasionally blast for sounding poorly-written  
> are, to
> me, completely acceptable in that I know that they're trying very hard
> to convey important information, and are both happy and eager to  
> answer
> questions if I am confused about something they say. I neither  
> begrudge
> them their capitalisation nor their grammar if there are mistakes.  
> They
> often, of course, get defensive when you lambaste them publicly, but
> that's to be expected. I would do the same, I imagine, even if I  
> didn't
> say so, I'd still FEEL unnecessarily chastised.
>
> On the flip side, there are those who drop in and just blast a quick,
> unintelligible spam, Google-translated from Chinese, Polish, Russian,
> Thai (or some other language that a computer translates VERY poorly),
> and then refuse to answer any questions about intent, often preferring
> to hide behind a shield of defensiveness. Those emails -- those are  
> the
> ones which cause me to lose all faith in the company or product being
> offered. They say to me that if someone is not willing to at least try
> to be understood by me when selling me his product, he's certainly not
> going to bother if I end up having a problem with his product.
>
> N.
>
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