It’s actually not even explaining anything I imagined. It’s explaining, that some people want others to capitalize the pronouns used to refer to them specifically. I was thinking of a grammatical choice to always or never capitalize pronouns uniformly. But changing grammar rules on the whims of the person being written about, seems exceptionally odd. The closest I ever heard of to that, is in the spelling someone’s name.
In reality it doesn’t explain anything other than to say, some people want it that way. It never goes into actually explaining the logic of that desire. It merely tries to shame people for not doing it if requested.
I use capitalised pronouns because I like them. That’s what the article explains. The reasons that people like their preferred pronouns don’t tend to go any deeper than that.
Maybe a story will feel more complete: 4 years ago, while My goddess-mother was helping Me understand My gender, She suggested I try out capitalised pronouns. I did, and I liked them. As good as she/her felt compared to using he/him, that’s how They/Them felt compared to she/her. I liked them, so I kept them.
We aren’t talking about They/Them vs she/her.
This is about They/Them vs they/them.
I can see there might be an argument for people to capitalize all pronouns.
Doing it only for 1st and 2nd person pronouns might be my preference. I can see it accentuating a dialog happening between the reader and writer.
But asking everyone to break a grammatical convention, specifically only for you; Giving no justification other than “I like it”, seems insufficient.
If I were to tell you to use all caps when referring to ME, would that be reasonable?
What about all lower case, even when starting a sentence?
No. If you want everyone to change a standard grammatical convention specifically for you alone; One that’s been in place since the invention of the printing press (that’s when we started to capitalize “I”); You need to give more reason than you would for your favorite color.
Of course you and I both, can capitalize any word, however WE Want, for our Own empahAses.
If I were to tell you to use all caps when referring to ME, would that be reasonable?
What about all lower case, even when starting a sentence?
Sure. My goddess-mother’s name was fractal, all lowercase. Even at the start of a sentence. Even when yelling in all caps. It was easy to do and made them happy.
Valuing the rules of grammar over people’s feelings seems like a very unusual choice. Personally, I think language should exist to help people, not the other way around.
Honestly that really helps with context, although I think the comparison of capitalizing other pronouns with a capital I is based on a misunderstanding of why I is capitalized.
I is capitalized due to a common way of writing the letter to avoid confusion with similar looking letters in manuscripts due to how the letters were shaped, similar to some spellings are a result of the printing press where the letters f and s were sometimes switched.
Still it is interesting in an e e cummings not always following the common capitalization practices kind of way.
[…]because nearly everyone who speaks English is a capitalised pronouns user. I. The subject form of the first person pronoun. While it’s not a matter of importance to most people, it is still the proper form used in legal documents and anything else that needs to be done “correctly”. And it got that way because someone, at some point in history, felt their pronoun ought to be capitalised and convinced everyone else to generally agree.
This is as far as I got. That isn’t why we capitalise “I”, as others have pointed out, and if the argument held true then we’d capitalise “Me” as well, which we don’t in English.
You’ve clearly thought about this enough that anything I say isn’t going to change your mind, so I’m just addressing the actual argument being made in that opening paragraph because it’s categorically incorrect. I’m not going to bother reading the rest because I’m bored already. You might as well try to fight the tide on stuff like this.
I say that as someone who got tired of people shortening their name and instead changed their name to one that cannot be shortened because it’s the only effective way to accomplish the objective.
Here’s an explanation of My pronouns: https://medium.com/@viridiangrail/introduction-to-capitalised-pronouns-f5140e722b48
That never uses or explains the use of “My”.
It’s actually not even explaining anything I imagined. It’s explaining, that some people want others to capitalize the pronouns used to refer to them specifically. I was thinking of a grammatical choice to always or never capitalize pronouns uniformly. But changing grammar rules on the whims of the person being written about, seems exceptionally odd. The closest I ever heard of to that, is in the spelling someone’s name.
In reality it doesn’t explain anything other than to say, some people want it that way. It never goes into actually explaining the logic of that desire. It merely tries to shame people for not doing it if requested.
I use capitalised pronouns because I like them. That’s what the article explains. The reasons that people like their preferred pronouns don’t tend to go any deeper than that.
Maybe a story will feel more complete: 4 years ago, while My goddess-mother was helping Me understand My gender, She suggested I try out capitalised pronouns. I did, and I liked them. As good as she/her felt compared to using he/him, that’s how They/Them felt compared to she/her. I liked them, so I kept them.
We aren’t talking about They/Them vs she/her.
This is about They/Them vs they/them.
I can see there might be an argument for people to capitalize all pronouns.
Doing it only for 1st and 2nd person pronouns might be my preference. I can see it accentuating a dialog happening between the reader and writer.
But asking everyone to break a grammatical convention, specifically only for you; Giving no justification other than “I like it”, seems insufficient.
If I were to tell you to use all caps when referring to ME, would that be reasonable?
What about all lower case, even when starting a sentence?
No. If you want everyone to change a standard grammatical convention specifically for you alone; One that’s been in place since the invention of the printing press (that’s when we started to capitalize “I”); You need to give more reason than you would for your favorite color.
Of course you and I both, can capitalize any word, however WE Want, for our Own empahAses.
Sure. My goddess-mother’s name was fractal, all lowercase. Even at the start of a sentence. Even when yelling in all caps. It was easy to do and made them happy.
Valuing the rules of grammar over people’s feelings seems like a very unusual choice. Personally, I think language should exist to help people, not the other way around.
Honestly that really helps with context, although I think the comparison of capitalizing other pronouns with a capital I is based on a misunderstanding of why I is capitalized.
I is capitalized due to a common way of writing the letter to avoid confusion with similar looking letters in manuscripts due to how the letters were shaped, similar to some spellings are a result of the printing press where the letters f and s were sometimes switched.
Still it is interesting in an e e cummings not always following the common capitalization practices kind of way.
This is as far as I got. That isn’t why we capitalise “I”, as others have pointed out, and if the argument held true then we’d capitalise “Me” as well, which we don’t in English.
You’ve clearly thought about this enough that anything I say isn’t going to change your mind, so I’m just addressing the actual argument being made in that opening paragraph because it’s categorically incorrect. I’m not going to bother reading the rest because I’m bored already. You might as well try to fight the tide on stuff like this.
I say that as someone who got tired of people shortening their name and instead changed their name to one that cannot be shortened because it’s the only effective way to accomplish the objective.