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Comment by fortran77 | Hacker News Reader

The "P" in "Parties" also needed to be capitalized.

What I don’t get is even in the absence of capitalization wouldn’t the default interpretation be whatever the prevailing reasonable meaning would be?

In legalese, there is a massive difference between proper and improper nouns. Capitalization matters a tremendous amount.

Capitalization matters very little in legalese, but punctuation is king.

This is because, unlike with punctuation, capitalization was not (and still is not) consistent across legal documents. Some people/firms use all caps for defined terms; others standard capitalization, and many don't capitalize at all on the grounds that a a defined term is not a proper noun unless it is a person, place, or thing.

In the article, the author lost half a million over capitalization. Using just that example (because it’s what we’re talking about) explain how it matters very little.

No, the author did not lose any money over capitalization. The author did not understand that capitalization was irrelevant.

What was relevant was that the author failed to properly disclosed a "connected person" as defined in the legal agreement. The law he was referencing would have done nothing to address/correct his failure, regardless of the capitalization used.

How do you write a noun that is not meant to be capitalized but happens to be place just after a full stop?

You capitalize it, just like you did with the first word of that sentence. That’s because it is an improper noun. My quote was:

“In legalese, there is a massive difference between proper and improper nouns.”

Do you understand or would you like more help?

Your quote is also: "Capitalization matters a tremendous amount". But at least in some positions capitalization is mandated by grammar rules. So, when a noun should appear in such a position (e.g., just after a full stop), how does one distinguish between its two forms (capitalized and not capitalized)? There should be a way, if that "matters a tremendous amount".

From the article, it's not clear that the prevailing reasonable meaning was Connected Parties. In fact, it sounds like the author thought the meaning was connected parties -- otherwise he would not have bothered to disclose the relationships of the two shareholders who were connected parties (lowercase) but not Connected Parties (uppercase).

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