Lucinda Duncalfe
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Lucinda
Bromwyn
​Duncalfe

Entrepreneur/CEO, Director, coach
Mom, c
ook, karateka
Native New Yorker
​#LymeDisease, #autism

what is with the lack of capitalization?

10/6/2017

1 Comment

 
sometime around 2000 i gave up using capitals in most emails. lots of people mention it, and some people are annoyed by it. no one has ever asked me why i do it, which i find curious. regardless, i want to go on the record explaining myself. 
1. it was really hard to write on early pdas (i used a series of treos.) dropping the capitalization made it a lot easier. 
it turned out that  realized that skipping capitals had other benefits as well.
2. i have an array of odd learning/information processing deficits. i didn't read until i was 8, but was then able to read the new york times a week later. i have a very hard time with the order of digits. and i have terrible recall of proper nouns, dates, and numbers. my short term memory is only 5 digits long. i can't tell my left from my right. i can't alphabetize, and i can't learn the multiplication table. i struggle to read any extended text in Title Caps. i literally cannot see typos, mine or others'. all of which means i have to process a lot more than most people, and i'm prone to errors. skipping the capitals to reduce complexity simplifies and reduces error while speeding my email processing. this seems like a good tradeoff. 
3. i could pay homage to one of my favorite poets (e.e. cummings) who used unconventional syntax expressively (and subversively?).
4. finally, it turned out that no caps has become a trademark look. when people see no-caps text, usually in an email, they suspect it is from me. it fits my direct, casual, results-oriented approach to things. 

of course, when communication is more formal–an email to a client, a bio, any other blog post–i use full capitalization. and full sentences. that's my story!
Picture
By MrLion626 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57751032
1 Comment
Bill Gutches link
10/12/2017 08:37:22 am

Lucinda: This is an interesting insight - Thank you for sharing. My first word processor (Word Star) used a lot of Ctrl-Alt-Shift combinations to create emphasis in the text: Bold, Italic, Underline, etc. And the thing that always tripped me up was trying to make my signature line which I wanted as "BG squared" but I could never figure out the Ctrl sequence for a superscript 2. Oh well, those were the days. bgbg

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    I've started and/or run too many venture capital-backed software companies, plus one ill-fated food startup. 
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