Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Why Do I Have to Press 1 for English? And Why Doesn't It Work?

Someone I went to high school with posted this on Facebook today, addressed to another fellow alumna:
Just Read (Liked It ) "The Kitchen House": A Novel by Kathleen Grissom
I understand "IF"These Books aren't for you !! I am Just sharing what I enjoy..If I didn't read I would be "CRAZY".. :)))))
(Incidentally, the post is tagged as "Edited", meaning that the writer made some changes [corrections?] to it before I saw it.)

I don't think this person is evil, mind you, or a dolt, or an idiot.  But I still have trouble wrapping my head around the fact that she feels the need to capitalize almost every fucking word, or the rationale for the quotation marks around IF and CRAZY, or why those two words are in all caps.  At the same time, enough people write like this that I don't think it's a random variation; I worked for a time with a manager -- a college graduate -- in the university kitchens who posted signs formatted and punctuated exactly the same way.  It gives me something to think about.  Writing standard English comes so easily to me that it's hard to understand why it's so hard for many other people.