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Language: en

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We don't speak to everyone in our lives in
the exact same way.

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We speak to our bosses, to customers,
and to strangers quite formally,

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and we speak to our friends
and family more casually.

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We convey different aspects of ourselves
through our speech,

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and so we change our way of speaking depending
on the identity that we’re trying to project.

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We do it, for the most part, unconsciously,

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and through history getting it wrong could
result in anything from slight awkwardness

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to death,

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depending on how badly you misjudged your speech
and who exactly you were talking to at the time.

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What we say and how we say it matters.

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But registers aren’t just for spoken language:

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they apply to the written word too.

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Now, there are people who believe all writing
on the internet should follow the same standards

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as a business email.

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But chatting to a friend is very different
to emailing your boss,

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and the way we write reflects that.

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Our online voice can have a wide variety of
"tones”,

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and especially for folks who grew up with
the internet,

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the need to convey tone means that there are
fairly well-agreed-upon conventions.

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In standard written English, capital letters
don’t convey much actual information.

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They just show proper nouns and
the beginning of sentences.

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And while that might make a paragraph
easier to read,

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we don’t flag those up at all
when we speak, it’s not necessary.

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So in informal conversations,
those that feel like speaking,

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we don’t need capital letters.

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But that means online communities could 
use capitals to convey

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something else that does
appear in conversation: tone.

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So all-caps became shouting.

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Side note: put that text in a speech bubble
and a hand-lettered font

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and suddenly it’s not shouting,

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it’s just how comic books look.
Context matters.

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Anyway: if all caps are shouting,

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lowercase is calm, normal conversation.

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Remove the punctuation and you get this sort
of aloof,

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don’t-really-care tone that works well for
deadpan humor and irony.

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Some people think all lowercase is "lazy,"

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but it often takes work
on the part of those typing.

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Most smartphones autocorrect it,

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they capitalize proper nouns and the beginning
of sentences for you.

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Turning that off or, more likely, going back
and undoing that capitalization takes effort,

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and that shows that it's actually meaningful
and not just "lazy." In fact,

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the rise of deliberate lowercasing
for stylistic effect

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coincides with the rise of autocapitalization
on smartphones.

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And on the other hand,

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people will sometimes capitalize the first
letter of words For Effect.

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That happened way before the internet:
Winnie-the-Pooh's author, A. A. Milne,

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used that a long, long time ago and fairly often

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in a way that seems
quite relatable today.

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We can repeat characters to convey prosody,
rhythm and sound, through text.

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We can repeat exclamation marks for more emphasis.

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We can use question marks, not for questions?

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but for a rising tone? That means we might
be unsure about something?

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Or that we want to hedge our bets about what
we’re suggesting, maybe? And reversing that,

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rhetorical questions can be marked by phrasing
them as a question,

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but not having a question mark,

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to show that there is no rising tone.

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And then there’s the period, or the full stop
in British English. Periods show falling tone.

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Which is pronounced at the end
of serious sentences.

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Which is why so many people perceive the period
as a marker of being very serious, or angry.

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There’s a difference between "ok"
and (breathes) "ok."

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Which is fine, when everyone
understands that tone.

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One of the most extreme examples is on Tumblr,

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where commas instead of periods and deliberate
misspellings end up with "crytyping," which,

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depending on who you talk to,

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is either a way to show emotional distress,

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or a way to sarcastically show emotional distress.

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The conventions change fairly quickly:

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now we don’t have to laboriously type out
text messages on old keypads,

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“cu l8r” doesn’t appear any more.

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There is no single “correct” way to write.

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There are standards and conventions and registers
for different use,

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and all the varieties of internet-speak
are just other registers.

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They’re different, sure, but they are consistent,

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and they’re understood by
those who use it.

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Just maybe don’t crytype to your boss.

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If you’ve ever wondered why you get ominous,
passive-aggressive,

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ellipses at the end of text messages from
usually-older people,

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that and a lot of other tales of internet
typography are in my co-author’s new book.

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Gretchen McCulloch's Because Internet
is on sale July 23, 2019.

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Links are in the description.