• Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    It’s the polite way to emphasize words. But also in ideological discussions there’s just so many nouns.

    • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      That’s…no? That’s not at all how to emphasize words. Only proper nouns are capitalized. Italics, bold, and underline are how to emphasize.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        You’re thinking about academic writing. Informal, marketing, opinion pieces, and really most other forms of writing allow for capitalizing as a less intrusive way to emphasize. Heck the military goes full bore and capitalizes the entire word for key terms and names.

          • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            Key terms are not always proper nouns. The intent is to be able to see the headline, scan the piece and read the in depth parts only if you need to. So it could look something like,

            Status of Farming Co-op in Opforistan East

            We assess this project to be RED because of missing heavy equipment. Local Civil Affairs unit reports they believe OPFOR elements are involved. State department asset concurs this project is infeasible due to ENEMY ACTION.

            Then add like, 30 sentences of details I don’t care to replicate right now. But the idea is as this report goes up the chain everyone can see the status, and the general reason why. Generally you’re going to capitalize who, what, why, where, and when if the title doesn’t make it clear. So missing here would just be when. But that could also just be the time of the report.

            • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              Military writing is weird and follows different conventions than normal writing. That’s absolutely not how you write prose.

              • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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                1 month ago

                Of course it’s not. I said as much above. It’s an example of the Flexibility of Language.

                • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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                  1 month ago

                  I mean sure, if you want to write things incorrectly no one is going to arrest you, but you’ll certainly get comments like mine.

                  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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                    1 month ago

                    Yup. I can see that. Thankfully, there is no right answer for little things like this in English.