I was just reading some coding examples in my quest to learn Tcl. One was a process that checks for all-uppercase posts, and then returns this message: Your ad appears to be all uppercase. ON THE INTERNET THIS IS CONSIDERED SHOUTING. IT IS ALSO MUCH HARDER TO READ THAN MIXED CASE TEXT. So we don’t allow it, out of decorum and consideration for people who may be visually impaired.
Its funny, because I hadn’t realized it before, but all of my years on the net have caused me to actually comprehend UPPERCASE as SHOUTING. When I’m reading something in my mind and something is all uppercase, I actually read it and think it as shouting. This self-referential message made me realize how much your perception of reality can change due to computers. Before the net I would never state “sigh” instead of actually carrying out the sighing action. Now I state it much more often then actually do it.
In the Simpsons episode I was watching yesterday the Comic Book Guy, upon reading something disturbing on his computer, shouts out, “No emoticon can express the anger I am feeling!” Hmm.
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hrm. you’ve made me self aware now.
interesting. i plan to take note of this.
instant messaging though, has created a new -structure- of language it seems.
heh. just like that. put it in — it is empahasized.
hrm.
Actually I usually do it with _this_ to indicate italics (underline). Sorry. š But geek conventions vary from site to site. On Slashdot they like to talk about "blockquoth the poster," whereas on TWoP they respond to comments by name, as in, "bob: snark. fred: i agree." which is somewhat confusing…but for some reason they like flat boards much more then threaded messaging forums. Again, an interesting thing to study — WHY??? Something I’ve wondered about way too much perhaps, but now I’m REALLY curious.
i used to do _that_ too, but i evolved.
who know.
i bet, though, that in the future there will be an entired feild devoted to the study of english as it is used on the internet. maybe it’ll even become its own dialect of language.