Re: ever so 'umble

WILL HOCHMAN (hochman@uscolo.edu)
Mon, 08 Mar 1999 21:01:15 -0700 (MST) 

Scottie, capitals don't matter as much as you want to argue they do.
Though all of your arguments make sense, in email I don't think capitals
are a very big deal and what someone says seems to not need conventions of
proper English to be said well.  Yes, as a univeristy professor I use
proper, academic English and teach it, but online, even on lists with
other writing professors, folks seem to not get hung up on criticizing
spelling, puntuation, capitals, etc...sure, we do get hung up on those
English professor lists with such "issues" as how many spaces should
follow a period or how to properly document an online source or
whatever, but most folks I know who care about writing care
mostly about ideas...here's a post that may help me illustrate what I
mean:

On Tue, 2 Mar 1999, Fred Kemp wrote:
>
>> The whole MLA spacing issue is, of course, closely akin to the ever
>> difficult question of how many angels really do dance on the head of a
pin.
>>
>> I hope, before I die, that serious writing issues finally center upon
what
>> writing DOES as opposed to a 19th century concern with what writing IS,
or
>> otherwise put, a functionalist concern with writing over a formalist
>> concern.
>>
>> On the Internet all the old print concerns and conventions are
shattering,
>> and it's killing a lot of traditionalist teachers who have based their
own
>> expertise not on writing effectiveness but on writing rules.  After ten
>> years as a writing teacher, any dud knows a lot more about arcane
writing
>> rules than most anybody one would encounter at a cocktail party, which
is
>> why at such parties once we confess to being English teachers the
people
>> around us immediately step back one or two steps.
>>
>> We know more of the rules, and perhaps that makes us feel good, but
knowing
>> the rules does not make us understand what makes effective writing.
MLA
>> nails down spacing and how many elipses and that sort of thing because
>> adjucating such stuff gives it power over the rest of us who agonize
over
>> how many dots really constitute the proper elipsis following a some
such
or
>> other.
>>
>> The written word is a power of such magnitude that only pedants would
try
to
>> reduce it to rules.  Or the French.  What we have, when we interact
with
>> young people and their struggles with making words work for them, is a
>> difficult commitment to building thought itself.  Thought despises such
>> generic rules, but bureaucracy loves them.  I participate in four or
five
>> dissertation defenses a year, and I would love it if good thinking
could
be
>> substituted for all the graduate school's fanaticism for margins and
>> spacing.
>>
>> My contention, which will undoubtedly cause consternation here, is that
form
>> is an ugly oldover from print conventions.  The digital age is more
>> concerned with what people say than with what frame they say it in.
>>
>> Fred Kemp
>> f.kemp@ttu.edu
>>

So you see Scottie, I must admit that I agree with professor Kemp but will
also admit that today I was asked on one of my class e lists about the
rule to capitalize "American."  Always of course! pun intended from a
punky american,  will