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In article <margaret%mailhost -at- toshiba -dot- tic -dot- oz -dot- au> writes:
>I constantly get documents to edit in which the writer plays fast and loose
>with initial caps. Any ideas as to why this is so?
Because It Makes Their Words Much More Important And Powerful Than They
Otherwise Would Be. After A While, Even This Is Not Enough AND THEY START
SHOUTING. Eventually they start to spray-paint graffiti.
It comes, I think, from reading to many Victorian novels.
Here in Taiwan I am faced with writers whose native tongue (sorry, make that
script) does not have case distinctions. They learn to use caps by reading
the people you are complaining about; I see so many caps I'm starting to
feel like the mad hatter. One of my English students wrote entirely in caps
because the complexity of determining when to push the shift key interfered
with his thinking.
Something I have noted almost everywhere is the inability to distiguish
between titles and proper names, and discription or definition (President
Clinton is the president of the United States).
