Sam Altman tweet after being fired
twitter.com
twitter.com
If there was any doubt he had insider knowledge, it's gone now.
Aside from this, You can't drop internal project names or company release dates months and weeks before time without being in the know somehow. Random isn't that good lol.
It's not the same at all.
Can someone explain to me why there seems to be such a high correlation between being high on the totem pole and lazy bits of written word? In this case, Sam can't be assed to bother with capital letters. For other people, it's abbreviations or some other unnecessary bit of laziness. I don't get it. In my experience the higher up you are in management the more you do this sort of thing.
"Look, world, I care so little about being dumped, I don't even need to make an effort. Plus, I've got brains and more money than I can count."
Next level: Bond villain.
if you could read my comment then i've proven my point.
posting from a windows laptop and Firefox, i get no autocorrect for grammar like capitalization. only firefox was detected as a work that needed to be capitalized.
they dgaf :)
And it really throws me - I’m spending hours ensuring my emails / communication covers all angles and then they reply with this salutation.
In fact in German it would be really awkward if one person stuck to formal language when the other makes an attempt to be informal - sticking to it is like saying "keep your distance" and could be a little hurtful for the person who tried to be informal.
I'm curious how this is supposed to play out in English.
In any case, I try to always write in full sentences for professional communications as a minimum (even if there are sprinkles of informal language)—I'm more comfortable writing this way at work, and it has the added benefit that it's hard for a third party to make a similar comment like you've experienced.
(At the other end, it can also be seen as too stiff and uncomfortable to be overly formal, even to supervisors. I've seen this where I had a direct report who was excessively formal at first. By encouraging him to open up and speak more openly, I believe that created a foundation for a more trusting work environment over time, which encouraged him to take more initiative and share his ideas when solving some problems that we were later facing as a team.)
However, one difference in English is with greetings. If you are coworkers, especially at around the same age and seniority, it feels unnatural to say "Dear ___," versus "Hey ____" or "Hi ____" (experiences may vary based on organizational culture). It's noticeable with texting, too. If you were to use formal punctation and end all texts with a period (such as: "Hi." or "I'm fine."), the texts may be perceived as less friendly (in contrast to: "hi" or "no prob, it's all good").
I believe that informality in English communication is often a signal of how close the relationship is. Though some people speak with others with a high level of formality even in their close relationships (or alternatively, speak informally in nearly all contexts), a change over time from formality to informality is often a sign of growing closeness and trust. Long story short, this plays out the same as you've described the effect in English, at least for personal relationships.
For professional relationships, it depends on the person and the organization. I generally try to roughly mirror the level of formality of the person who I'm speaking with. However, if I'm reporting to a person with higher seniority than me, I do try to have at least a minimum level of formality. Even if a CEO were to send a text in a very friendly and informal way, I would try to be polite but at least semi-formal.
More explicitly, the Korean language makes the different possible levels of speech clearer. This source [1] identifies five to six levels of formality in Korean (Wikipedia identifies a higher seventh level reserved for historical dramas, addressing royalty, and religious texts). So, even if a coworker were to address me with the Korean equivalent of "plain" or "intimate" speech ("heya {name}", all in lower case), I've found it the most comfortable to respond in at least a familiar or polite way ("hey {Name}..." or "Hey {Name}"...).
That way, there is both a sense of respect and a sense that there is an attempt to match the person's level of familiarity. There is then less of a chance that a person might feel uneasy due to either too much familiarity or excessive formality on my part, which makes communications easier.
[1] https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Anthropology/Li...
They're busy and they don't give a damn because they don't have to.
Grammar and punctuation is a competence signal, but once you've demonstrated you can do it (by getting to the top) it's not necessary.
At the end of the day, as time goes on, the methods of communications change as well. It does not exactly correlate one’s intelligence, intent, societal status or whatsoever. Prevalent use of emojis would be the simplest example.
it might sound dumb to you, but not capitalizing sentences properly amongst certain groups effectively means you’re not concerned with the optics of being viewed as someone who “doesn’t know grammar”.
it sort’ve displays a certain “I know proper grammar but I don’t really care to prove it to you”.
edit: and as others mention, it can be seen as less formal and friendly as well
don’t shoot the messenger :)
It can also break meaning though. Try de-capitalizing:
* I helped my Uncle Jack off a horse.
Writing all low case is way to make sure that everybody understand the writing is just a draft, not ready for printing, or not final or official correspondence.
Editor could not just send it to press without proofreading and editing it.
No journo. or professional writer I know would ever forget to hit the shift key for some sort of weird "convenience". It is harder to write all lower case prose. Hit . + and you are primed to hold left shift for the next character with your left or right small finger (pinkie).
We humans mostly have five digits per hand. Even a single finger "poker" will manage to hit shift too, when appropriate.
Many years ago I used to teach a hand written correction markup used on manuscripts. Delta for delete, triple underline for change of case, the correct way to route clause moves etc. You put the change in the body and a symbol in the left margin for each change. To accommodate these changes you use 1.5 or double space inter line in your draft. You might also allow a slightly larger margin but that is generally optional and probably wasteful. The marginal indicator markers can be a bit "loose" - its hand written so an asterisk and a foot note is always an option for really tricky cases. When it gets too bad, the spike is the final home for the piece (or an open fire).
Your experience of journalism is rather different to mine.
My mother used a manual typewriter and then later golf ball etc. I did too. She and I were virtually incapable of not using shift. Smacking physical keys is rather satisfying and you tend to pause first before hitting them. Its a very different discipline to modern word processing. Worrying about case will come very low down the pecking order compared to speling (lol).
you have been misled by sample bias
people lower down in the org do the same or worse
basically under-35s view punctuation and speaking in complete sentences as boomer artefacts
not my choice just telling it like i see it
Capitalisation and punctuation provides a form and rhythm to written prose. When you scan (English) prose, your eyes very quickly pick up the start and end of a clause or sentence via the capitol letters and certain marks. English lacks nearly all accents and other "letter adjuster marks" that other languages enjoy. That generally means that when you see a mark of some sort in an English sentence it is a form of containment and not a change of sound.
That means we have a lot less sound adjusters, which means we end up with a lot more "local knowledge". A silly example: Slough and slough - the first is a town in Berkshire and the second is what snakes and crabs etc do to their skins/carapaces to grow to the next size.
That said, English is extraordinarily tolerant of pronunciation in most cases. You may not know the "correct" sound of a word but a bit of a dabble (try slightly different approaches) will get you there.
This is the Guggenheim, https://architectelevator.com/architecture/famous-architects...
will have more to say about what’s next later.