i, curmudgeon. Insufferable affectation #53: eschewing the use of upper-case letters. Impresses the reader in the same way that dotting an i or j with a heart or a smiley face does. The former, oddly, is widely practiced by male-type persons, while the latter, as we know, is generally restricted to perky teenage girls. People, why do you do this? It's really grating.

I'll let it slide if you can persuade me that it's the result, say, of your having taught yourself how to type on a keyboard with a broken shift-key, and that now your habits are too ingrained to change, or you are just too old to learn new tricks.

#54: psychotic restriction of use of punctuation symbols to ellipses. Less common than, but significantly correlated with, the above transgressions.

Posted by Moira Breen at February 03, 2004 11:50 AM