Re: USAGE: (No) Capitals in "I", "you" and one's e-mail signature

[Suzette Seveny <sseveny -at- PETVALU -dot- COM>]

I can only speak for myself, but here goes...

On Tuesday, October 06, 1998 2:53 PM, Dr Rita Puzmanova wrote:
>
> 1) Why does someone use "i" (meaning me) instead of "I" (in e-mail,
> namely)?

Could be 2 reasons, one - to save time, and two - to avoid confusion with
lowercase el "l".
>
> 2) Are there some languages which, instead of "I" put more emphasis onto
> formal "You" through capitalizing the "Y" (Czech is an example)?

Don't know - although the French have a formal "you", but that is an entirely
different word (vous / tu).
>
> 3) Why does someone manually sign the e-mail by his/her name without
> (any) capitals?

To save time.
>
> Additionally: Why there are e-mail messages which do not use any
> capitals what so ever (and require a "search" for every other sentence,
> as dot gets easily overlooked)?

To save time.  Nobody ever accused email of being an eloquent method of
communication.  More formal communication usually takes the form of memos and
letters.  The answer is as easy as the answer to "why are there spelling
mistakes, abbreviations, grammatical errors and lack of punctuation in so many
e-mail messages?  (including yours as well as this one).  Informality and
brevity. I think of email as electronic post-it notes I send.  No need to get
fancy.
>
> I can think of a variety of reasons for the above but I am really not
> sure
> and would appreciate the truth - any response and/or simply opinion (in
> all cases pls respond directly to me, too).

If you were to proofread your own mailnote, and then answer why did you
abbreviate "pls", not use commas, etc., I suspect you may answer your own
questions.  Not criticizing, just trying to be helpful.

Suzette Seveny
Markham, Ontario, Canada
sseveny -at- petvalu -dot- com or suzette -at- yesic -dot- com

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