Tangent: what is the appeal of the “no capitalization” writing style? I never know what message the author is intending to convey when I see all lower case.

Normally I can ignore it, but the font on this blog makes it hard to distinguish where sentences start and end (the period is very small and faint).

"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I really dislike it too.

I think it might be adults ignoring established grammar rules to make a statement about how they identify a part of a group of AI evangelists.

Kind of like how teenagers do nonsensical things like where thick heavy clothing regardless of the weather to indicate how much of a badass them and their other badass coat wearing friends are.

To normal humans, they look ridiculous, but they think they're cool and they're not harming anyone so I just leave them to it.

You mention the technical aspect (readability) and others have suggested the aesthetic, but you could also look at it as a form of rhetoric. I'm not sure it's really effective because it sort of grates on the ear for anyone over 35, but maybe there's a point in distinguishing itself from AI sloptext.

Incidentally, millenials also used the "no caps" style but mainly for "marginalia" (at most paragraph-length notes, observations), while for older generations it was almost always associated with a modernist aesthetic and thus appeared primarily in functional or environmental text (restaurant menus, signage, your business card, bloomingdales, etc.). It may be interesting to note that the inverse ALL CAPS style conveyed modernity in the last tech revolution (the evolution of the Microsoft logo, for example).

Casual, informal, friendly, hip, young, etc.

Can make sense on twitter to convey personality, but an entire blog post written in lower case is a bit much.

Someone at some point styled themselves as a new E.E. Cummings, and somehow this became a style. The article features inconsistent capitalization for proper names alongside capitalized initialisms, proving there is some recognition of the utility of capitalization.

Ultimately, the author forces an unnecessary cognitive burden on the reader by removing a simple form of navigation; in that regard, it feels like a form of disrespect.

Typeface issues aside all-lowercase is about having a more conversational register, intended to indicate a chilled-out and informal vibe.

It does read as a little out of place in a serious post like the OP though.

I think I like it generally, maybe not in this specific case, but I'm not sure why it appeals to me.

Over the last 5 years or so I've been working on making my writing more direct. Less "five dollar words" and complex sentences. My natural voice is... prolix.

But great prose from great authors can compress a lot of meaning without any of that stuff. They can show restraint.

If I had to guess, no capitalization looks visually unassuming and off-the-cuff. Humble. Maybe it deflects some criticism, maybe it just helps with visual recognition that a piece of writing is more of a text message than an essay, so don't think too hard about it.

It mildly amuses and fascinates me, because for the last decade Gladwellians and business gurus have extolled the virtues of modern English as a flat, hierarchy-less language in comparison to Japanese, Korean, etc. which causes plane crashes. And yet here we see an overwhelming desire to create hierarchy in English, so the author can pretend to be more casual and ordinary.

Its the black turtle neck of 2026

I’ve seen it a lot in ‘90’s hacker / net adjacent cultures. It always reads as gen-x/elderly tech millennial to me - specifically post 1993 net culture but prior to mass adoption of autocorrect.

It was the norm on irc/icq/aim chats but also, later, as the house style for blogs like hackaday.

Now I read it as one would an hear an accent (such as a New England Maritime accent) that low-key signifies this person has been around the block.

Even more recently is a minor signifier that this text was less likely generated by llm.

For "something that is published" (which includes a comment like this) I clearly dislike it too, but for chatting / texting, I realize that I often use it more than my interlocutors, and I'm not sure why. There's a part of lazyness I guess, but also a vague sense of "conveying the impression of a never ending stream of communication", which is closer in my mind to the essence of the chat medium. In French, there is also the additional layer of "using the accents or not".

i don't know this author but ian bremner does this. it's as if he's conveying what he believes are serious and important thoughts in an unserious and casual way, to make it appear as if the thoughts - which again he probably thinks are brilliant - just come quickly and naturally. it comes across as performative though again not making claims against this author. and yes i am not using sentence case here, but this is not an essay.

First time I've seen it. It will be interesting to see if that trends. I can think of at least one previous case where internet writing style overturned centuries of english conventions: we used to put a double space after each period. The web killed that due to double spaces requiring extra work (&nbsp, etc), and at this point I think word processors now follow the convention.

It's always useful to check oneself and know that languages are constantly evolving, and that's A Good Thing.

It’s weird being literate enough in a language now without a bicameral script (or spaces). When I was younger, I thought this stuff wasn’t so important, but then when you learn a new language, you are trying to figure out what a “robert” is, to then be told “oh, it’s just a name”—which is obvious if know standard `en-Latn` conventions.

My assumption was that it's a way to convey it was written by a human because it would be hard to get an AI to write in all lowercase (which it actually isn't).

I've seen this before, I know Sam Altman does it (or used to do it). That was a couple years ago. Hope it doesn't become a trend.

IF YOU CAN UNDERSTAND THAT ALL CAPS IS SHOUTY, then it is easy to follow that all lower is a whisper, informal, casual way to talk. there are people who dislike all caps, i do too. i feel even capitalizing the first part of nouns and such grammar is shouty. yup. different people have different sensitivities for different things. i always liked all lower, also picked it from python_programming for a decade. so i am happy for this trend.

My old CEO - ex sun/greenplum/pivotal swore that sending an email in lowercase forced the other person to read the whole message and not skim.

Perhaps it's marketing to attract those who wear sweatpants to school. The author's other posts are written normally.

It’s incredibly obnoxious. I feel like I’m ready AIM circa 2000.

For me is like a someone is trying to show me something using form instead of content.

You know how people used to wear the black turtleneck to channel Steve Jobs? This is how they channel Sam Altman (who also does this). It's just an affectation saying "I'm with Sam". There's not much more to it.

as perfect text became an indicator for AI generated content, people intentionally make mistakes (capitalization) to make their text appear more human; and its also faster

I have chatted with someone else, and they pointed me to a blog post (will attach if I can find).

The general idea is deliberately doing something triggering some people and if the person you're interacting with is triggered by what you're doing, they are not worthy of your attention because of their ignorance to see what you're doing beyond the form of the thing you're doing.

While I respect the idea, I find it somewhat flawed, to be honest.

Edit: Found it!

Original comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39028036

Blog post in question: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1209794.html

I'm generally of the opinion that capitalization is not necessary in many cases, such as at the start of sentences. That's what punctuation is for :)

easier to type without using the shift key, and in pg you can just use LIKE not ILIKE to find the word.

>I never know what message the author is intending to convey when I see all lower case.

JUST IMAGINE A FACEBOOK POST THAT IS WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS AND THEN INVERT THAT IMAGINATION.

Informal, casual, friendly

i dislike pressing shift, especially on non-ergo (non-thumb) keyboards where it uses my pinky.

No idea, but it's something I've been thinking about ever since my parents dug out an old school journal from when I was younger and they were laughing about the stuff I wrote in there... The first 50 pages or so were full of laughably simple phrases like, "played with sand" or "i like computers".

Later in the journal my writing "improved". Instead I might write, "Today I played in the sandpit with my friends."

I vaguely remember my teacher telling me I needed to write in full sentences, uses the correct punctuation, etc. That was the point of these journals – to learn how to write.

But looking back on it I started to question if I actually learnt how to write? Or did I just learn how to write how I was expected to?

If I understood what I was saying from the start and I was communicating that message in fewer words and with less complexity, was it wrong? And if so wrong in what sense?

You see this with kids generally when they learn to speak. Kids speak very directly. They first learn how to functionally communicate, then how to communicate in a socially acceptable way, using more more words.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think the fact you can drop capitals and communicate just as effectively is kinda interesting. If it wasn't for how we are taught to write, perhaps the better question to ask here is why there are even two types of every letter?

Altman/Brockman did it a lot and it became popular. I don't remember if it is true or "Malcolm Gladwell" true, but in various stories all NBA players started wearing baggy shorts because Michael Jordan did for one reason or another, like wearing his college shorts under them.

Makes you reduce your guard to clearly AI generated content.

informality, humanity — we're in an age where we can't assume anything is written by a person anymore

Tangent to the tangent!

I've started using it professionally because it signals "I wrote this by hand, not AI, so you can safely pay attention to it."

Even though in the past I never would have done it.

In work chats full of AI generated slop, it stands out.

it's a billionaire thing. look at the Epstein email threads. too lazy to check +typos allovr .

[flagged]

Its a gen z trend. My nephews do the same. We are old.