jimrandomh comments on I'm Not Saying People Are Stupid - Less Wrong

38 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 09 October 2009 04:23PM

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Comment author: jimrandomh 09 October 2009 08:17:28PM 14 points [-]

Capitalized text is no easier to read than uncapitalized text.

Maybe for you, but not for me. Capital letters serve as focus points when scanning through text, and appear mainly in the places that people are most likely to be looking for when scanning: proper nouns (to help when backtracking through text to resolve a pronoun) and sentence boundaries (to help find a start point when switching from scanning to reading). Text without capitalization is like text in bad handwriting or a poorly chosen font; missing capitalization only slows readers down a little bit, but that's more than enough to make many people skip reading it entirely.

Comment author: bogus 09 October 2009 08:27:18PM 5 points [-]

Maybe for you, but not for me. Capital Letters serve as focus Points when scanning through Text, and appear mainly in the Places that People are most likely to be looking for when scanning: proper Nouns (to help when backtracking through Text to resolve a Pronoun) and sentence Boundaries (to help find a start Point when switching from Scanning to Reading). Text without Capitalization is like Text in bad Handwriting or a poorly chosen Font; missing Capitalization only slows Readers down a little Bit, but that's more than enough to make many People skip reading it entirely.

I agree with this Comment wholeheartedly. Note that title-cased Text (as in newspaper Headlines) is generally even less readable than uncapitalized Text.

Comment author: pdf23ds 09 October 2009 08:36:07PM 1 point [-]

'(NOT TO MENTION LISP STYLE TEXT)