English is not my first language, so when l started speaking English online, one thing immediately annoyed me: how l have to press the caps button whenever l need to write “l” in a sentence.
So l used my big brain, and l’ve stopped doing it. instead, whenever l need to talk about myself, l use the letter L in lowercase.
Do you do it too?
Wait wait wait… you do know that holding Shift while pressing a letter will capitalize that letter, right?
As to answer your question… no, I don’t. I’m simply using Shift whenever I need to capitalize something. Very rarely (almost never) do I use Caps Lock, unless I need to emphasize something and formatting (usually using bold) simply isn’t enough.
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Yes, I capitalize the I. Hold shift and press a letter key.
… I’m amazed someone doesn’t know that. This like, more fundamental than keyboard shortcuts.
I always capitalize my “I’s” pretty sure it was drilled into me when I first learned to type.
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Precisly because you’re a native English speaker I believe. Most French don’t know this. I do know it, although it’s not been long since I learned about it, but it’s still an extra key to press.
… Do you not have capital and lowercase letters in French?
I mean, I know there’s languages that don’t have such letters – some don’t have letters at all – but I wasn’t aware French was one of them.
The problem is that i do not know any Race besides the Anglo-Saxons (GB, USA, Canada, Australia, NZ) that refer to themselves by using a capital letter (even in the middle of the sentence).
No, it’s just that the word “I” being capital is a purely English anomaly. Usually capitals are reserved exclusively for proper nouns and the start of a sentence.
To this end, it was really hard for me to learn to type “je” instead of “Je” in french, because capitalizing the word “I” is so ingrained. (je = I, roughly)
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Fascinating… I mean, I always said that English is a bit weird, but I was not aware this particular element was in any way unusual.
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Using l in place of I will screw up my entire write up and future write ups, as I don’t look at the keyboard when typing. Forming the habbit of replacing the I’s will eventually end up with me typlng everythlng with L’s.
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Very big brain, indeed. Try breaking that habit and form a new one of pressing shift down to capitalize. I’m sure there are a few typing trainers online that can very quickly resolve this and streamline your typing more.
It’ll also prevent this atrocity: IlIlIlIlIlIlIl
https://study.com/academy/lesson/french-capitalization-rules.html
Not sure how this is different than English. The writer says it’s different, but the information provided works the same as english…
I’m going to assume the difference is that, “I,” in french is not a single character and that, “I,” in English is to make it easier to recognize.
Most capitalization in English has to do with seeing and understanding the word faster. If French used the same word structure it would have probably adapted the exact same thing. I’m assuming it’s literally the same rule set, but with different words you get different results. As far as I know it has to do with how the brain recognizes patterns.
And if you keep using l instead of I you will eventually be mistaken as a lazy spanish speaker. 8p
Referring to everything as, “The,” will just get weird. Or is that french…?
I am not going to the store.
The am not going to the store.
You am not going to the store.
I’m not listening.
The am not listening.
You am not listening.
Yea, Spanish makes that slightly weirder and funnier.
I wonder if some of that isn’t from the advent of type writers and the different characters sets in use.
Well, in English, you have to use capital letters for a single letter in the middle of a sentence. This is where the difference lies.
If English followed French rules, or rules of any other language really, you’d write it this way: “well, i’m not sure how i feel about it”. Because it’s in the middle of a sentence, so it makes no sense to capitalize it. You don’t do it with other pronouns after all. You wouldn’t say “How are You today?” for example.
As far as I know, this is only for the singular first person pronoun, “I”. It’s kinda the only exception to the rules which are more or less shared among almost all European and North American languages which use latin writing.
Actually, you would if you’re addressing the other person in a respectful way (for example, student writing professor an e-mail).
So I guess that takeaway is “every rule has an exception”.
It may be so, but that exception concerns a word that you use all the time.
And also: “weird rules can be ignored by using one’s big brain”.
I use the shift key.
Yes, because there are forums where the I (capital i) is different than l (L)
No. Something similar in Polish too. “Ty” is “you” and the “T” is always capitalized no matter where in the sentence it is.
I being capitalized is something of a rule breaker, but the capitalization specifically is hardly an anomaly in English. Proper nouns are all capitalized, for example, no matter where in the sentence they fall.
It’s not a rule breaker since its literally a rule of English to capitalize it LOL.