welcome one, welcome all

...to my blog.

first off, i would like to comment on the lack of caps. if this bothers you tremendously, such that you are unable to read this blog, i'm super sorry.

gee, did that sound trite? no? dang.

a friend, jason (see his blog here and check out day 58 specifically), recently flipped out while peeking over my shoulder as i wrote an email to a friend. he was mortified and nearly personally offended at my lack of capitalization. well, too bad. i would like to say that later in the day, as we continued (can you believe it?) to discuss the email slang/different grammar rules he did say that when he was in college and just starting the email thing, he said the way he and his friends figured they could get away with not capitalizing the letters requiring it was to just type the whole thing with the caps lock button depressed. oh, i said, THAT is better than no caps? first of all, harder to read. second of all, i don't want to be yelled at for a whole email. third, for emphasis you'd have to go to italics, and we all know that's a bit much. anyway, that made his whole criticism of my pinkie laziness moot, because he'd gone the other way himself. hmph.

emails are emails. folks, i'm an english major. i know grammar, i know spelling, i know punctuation. and i choose not to capitalize. once upon a time when i was the editor of a weekly newspaper entertainment section, a friend, kelly mcevers, wrote a review of the latest liz phair. and kelly wanted to do it a little differently so we agreed she'd write it as a friendly email. part of that was no caps, random misspellings and limited slang (this was 1995--it was still pretty new). we laughed as my copy editor went into spasms of disagreement but style won the day and the review ran in our email form.

now. would i do that with every review/article/feature that came along? heavens, no. but emails are allowed to have their own style and quirkiness--things you wouldn't allow in formal communication. and yes, if i have to write a "formal" email, i do capitalize. hey, i'm not trying to piss anyone off or make some kind of political statement. i just like the look of no caps. ever heard of bell hooks?