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What is it about the text messages and emails sent by older people that make me feel like I'm having a stroke? (jorts.horse)

submitted 5 months ago by fathermcgruder@jorts.horse to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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What is it about the text messages and emails sent by older people that make me feel like I'm having a stroke?

Maybe they're used to various shortcuts in their writing that they picked up before autocorrect became common, but these habits are too idiosyncratic for autocorrect to handle properly. However, that doesn't explain the emails I've had to decipher that were typed on desktop keyboards. Has anyone else younger than 45 or so felt similarly frustrated with geriatrics' messages?

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[–] originalfrozenbanana@lemm.ee 15 points 5 months ago (6 children)

And why do old people randomly capitalize nouns? Every Sentence reads like the just read the Written Word for the first time and wanted to give It a Try For Themselves

[–] paysrenttobirds@sh.itjust.works 17 points 5 months ago (2 children)

My Android keyboard will automatically capitalize lots of common words like target, guess, even-- shit it's not doing it now, it heard me thinking. I guess it's brands, but some of them I don't recognize. I'm going to be mad if it starts doing it again as soon as I leave this thread.

[–] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 8 points 5 months ago

My phone insists on Land. Wtf, phone?

[–] tehmics@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

This happens to me when I add a word to the dictionary but it happened to be the first word of a sentence at the time I added it, so it got capitalized and now the dictionary thinks it's a proper noun

[–] bamfic@lemmy.world 12 points 5 months ago

In 18th century English they did the same Thing. German too. Nouns were more important

[–] jimmux@programming.dev 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

This is the accepted writing style at my work, and it's been driving me nuts for years. I'm talking about the copy we put on all our public facing materials. Even our resident linguists hate it, but apparently someone high up thinks it's industry standard.

Remembering this just made me happier to be leaving soon. They're so resistant to challenging entrenched habits. I should have seen these signs when I started.

[–] blindsight@beehaw.org 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I always capitalize words that locally mean something specific and technical. Like the Group a Record is associated with in the Student table.

Do you mean things like that? Or just capitalizing all Nouns for no Reason or Something silly?

[–] jimmux@programming.dev 2 points 5 months ago

Similar to that. Nouns that have a somewhat specific meaning in our business context, like Investor, Adviser, Product, Portfolio, etc.

[–] otp@sh.itjust.works 7 points 5 months ago

I'm not as old as OP mentioned, but sometimes I'll do it when it's a word that's commonly abbreviated or part of a title. Like "Original Poster".

I've had a couple people ask me if I'm German, but no, I just like some of their ideas on capitalization.

[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

And why do old people randomly capitalize nouns?

I'll admit it's a weird Habit.

Edit: Nouned.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

For me. That’s usually autocorrect. If it decides a typo such as accidenta double-space means the end of one sentence, then capitalizes a word, it’s below my threshold to go back and fix. You shouldn’t be confused by random. Apitalization and letter skips from autocorrect, but I’ll correct it when it’s autocorrect sped to to something. Different like this last sentence where it looks like I’m having a stroke