• Capitalization Writing the first letter of a word in uppercase, and the rest of the letters in lowercase.

• Title Case All words are capitalized, except non-initial articles like “a, the, and”, etc. Used for…um, titles.

• lowercase All letters in all words are lowercase.

• Sentence case Capitalization just like a standard English sentence, e.g. “The damn has broken.” Many sub-titles use this case format.

• ALL CAPS All letters in every word are capitalized. Used for extreme emphasis and considered rude when used over the Internet.

• SMALL CAPS Only capital letters are used for all letters in all words, but the letters are the size of lowercase letters of the font, not the uppercase.

• CamelCase Words are written without spaces, and the first letter of each word is capitalized. Also called Upper Camel Case. Used mostly in computers.

• lowerCamelCase A variation of Camel Case in which the fist letter of the word is lowercase, e.g. iPhone, iPad, etc.

• SNAKE_CASE Punctuation is removed and spaces are replaced by a single underscore. Can be done with either upper or lowercase, but whichever is used should continue to be used.

• Leet Substitutes numbers for some letters that are most similar, e.g. 3′s for E’s, 1′s for I’s, etc.

• StudlyCaps or StickyCaps Random capitalization within a word, or sometimes nonrandom capitalization, but not where it should be, e.g. cAPITALIZING the wrong part of a word because the CAPS LOCK is on.

::

Learn your damn homophones.

In the IT world it’s easy to find debates about how to pronounce things, and one of the more famous of these over the years has been the pronunciation of Linux. The basic mistake people make is going with the hyper-liberal view that there are many correct ways to say everything, and that neither is more correct or more wrong than another.

Bullocks.

When an authority for a particular product or movement explicitly states how that thing is pronounced, that pronunciation does in fact become the correct one.

And what does Linus Torvalds, the father of Linux, say about how to pronounce the operating system he created?

That’s about as clear as it gets. ::

Related

[ How Does OS X Pronounce Itself? | dmiessler.com ]

The letter “D”.
The letter “D”.

And each letter has

[ The Letter "D" | wikipedia.org ]

I even got Bejtlich and Ranums’ opinions on that, and they agreed with me as well.

This seems wrong. What’s the right way to do this?

Bejtlich’s and Ranum’s opinion?

I don’t think so, because I got two opinions.

Anyone know for sure?

Many, especially in the blogsphere, are fond of saying, “This country is becoming fascist.” Or, “We’re on a path to fascism.” That sounds cool, and it certainly will get some attention, but I wonder if most using the word “fascism” actually know what it means.

A Little About Facism

First a test. What’s the difference between Facism and Communism? Not an easy answer for probably 95% of Americans, including me until very recently (hence this post).

Here are the main components of Facism:

• Nationalism (focus on the cohesion and success of the nation)
• Authoritarianism (emphasis on the authority of the state)
• Class Collaboration (classes accept their differences and work together)
• Economic Planning (think Roosevelt’s New Deal)
• Militarism (maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests)
• Integralism (similar to class collaboration; essentially saying all parts work for the same goal)
• Populism (being for the people rather than for a small group of elites)

I’m not an expert on political science so I won’t wade out too deep here, but the short answer (based on my limited research) is that there is relatively little difference between fascism and communism. The primary, most noticeable components are present in both:

1. Militarism
2. Nationalism
3. Authoritarianism

Check out this quote from Hitler and see if it reminds you of anything:

We have endeavored to depart from the external, the superficial, endeavored to forget social origin, class, profession, fortune, education, capital, and everything that separates men, in order to reach that which bind them together. — Adolf Hitler

Sounds pretty communist, right? Pretty much the main difference between it and communism seems to be nationalism, i.e. a main communist concept has been that of just being a worker, and not a worker for any particular place.

Basically, unless I’m missing something, facism is communism with nationalism and controlled capitalism added in. But the main points are the same—you still have a state-run system for the most part, and a focus on the good of a whole.

Much more to explore on this. And if any of you are into poly sci I welcome any input. Political Science has suddenly become very interesting to me.

Operative Questions

When we, the few remaining “aware” citizens of the United States say we are afraid of the government becoming something, what is it specifically that we’re afraid of? Or, to put it another way, what is it that makes America what it is? And how will we know when it’s become something else?

What are the characteristics that we do not want to see in it? What are the names for these things? Do we not want socialism? Do we not want fascism?

Given my newfound knowledge of fascism I’d say there are quite a few people watching (and hosting) FOX News who are actually striving for fascism without knowing it.

Rambling now…must go to bed.

More soon.

Please comment.

AVEN (Think Avian or Avon)

Affect Verb Effect Noun

That’s the basic rule. A couple of exceptions exist, however:

1. Affect can be a noun if you’re talking about psychology
2. Effect can be a verb that means “to accomplish” or “to bring about”

Check out the more verbose description at Grammar Girl.

If you don’t know how and when to use an apostrophe – or the difference between their, there, and they’re – don’t talk to me. Ever — Chris Pirillo

I understand his frustration (he was being flip, by the way, not totally serious); this has always bothered me greatly as well. But I wouldn’t go quite that far. I just don’t see it being as important as the ideas themselves. The thing that bothers me is seeing friends commit these errors and feeling uncomfortable about how to approach the subject.

I want to shake them into realizing how poorly it reflects on them, but at the same time I don’t want to be a dick.

So, aside from what’s “accepted” or “technically correct”, what’s the best position to take on this? Is it better to try and completely separate the content from the communication, or does a failure to properly communicate an idea imply something about the quality of the idea itself?

Is it justified for people to diminish (or even dismiss) content based on whether or not it’s presented in proper English? Or is that just snobbery?

What do you think? Where is your own personal “grammar nazi” line?