On 06/01/2011 05:58 AM, phanisvara das wrote:
On Wed, 01 Jun 2011 01:20:36 +0530, Per Jessen <per@opensuse.org> wrote:
i've picked this up during
high school, when a teacher mentioned that there used to be a reform movement trying to abolish capitals from the german language. that movement seems to have failed, except for one follower: me. Regardless, you're writing English here, so what is the significance of the capitalization used in German?
no significance whatsoever. i just got used to writing w/o capitals during the decades from high school until now and find it doesn't cause problems. i'm still able to capitalize (more or less) correctly if i have to, like in official communication and such. not trying to be a rebel, but doing what comes easiest to me. if this should cause great consternation for some, i could switch on the capitals for this list; not writing that much anyway.
There are writing systems (Arabic, Hebrew, among others) that don't have capitals at all. and nobody misses them. So writing with only lower-case characters can't be a cardinal sin. For that matter, e. e. cummings was not the only English author who perceived that capitals are unnecessary; you might enjoy reading "Archie and Mehitabel" by Don Marquis, in which a cockroach (who, in a former life, "was a vers libre poet, and this is my reward -- to see life from the under side") residing in a newspaper office left notes at night on the author's typewriter by climbing to the top of the machine and hurling himself head first onto successive keys -- a method which obviously makes the Shift key effectively inaccessible. It is not dishonorable not to use capitals. -- Stan Goodman Qiryat Tiv'on Israel -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org