Many readers rely on articles being written in a specific language, does that mean every writer is obligated to publish every piece in every language?
Has it occurred to anyone who sees capitalization as a must-have for legibility, that an opportunity is being presented to train oneself to read text without traditional capitalization?
Maybe it's because I studied poetry, or because I was a voracious reader of experimental writing when I was younger, but I've probably worked my way through thousands of pages of uncapitalized or unconventionally capitalized writing; I can empathize if it's more difficult for you to read (personally I would consider an absence of paragraph breaks a nearly-unforgivable travesty), and I wouldn't even deny you the opportunity to complain about it.
But I think calling it "a must" for accessibility is perhaps overstating it a bit.
There is no obligation at all (my comment did not include any must beyond that being a requirement for broadly accessible text either). Merely the observation that if you want to write accessible text in any chosen language, following conventions means that you expand your reach.
Experimental language has its place. I can quite enjoy that too depending on the context. But combining the wish to convey a story or message with avant-garde text layout turns it into something more akin to art. I'm not always in the mood for that, in part because it is more taxing to engage with. In this case I figure the goal of the author is for readers to hear their story, not grapple with their specific manner of self-expression. Of course if their life goal is to make lowercase text common and acceptable, then this may be completely on point. My point about the accessibility of the text still stands though.
> Has it occurred to anyone who sees capitalization as a must-have for legibility, that an opportunity is being presented to train oneself to read text without traditional capitalization?
I can train myself to read text upside-down as well, or in Klingon, or with no spaces at all. I have no wish to do so, since most authors seem to regard such text as unnecessarily harsh on their readers. Besides, being able to read well because you have a solid grasp on the conventions, lexicon, and idioms used is a net benefit to me. Our brains are pattern matching machines after all — pattern recognition is what we humans excel in. If have no desire to diminish that skill either.
> since most authors seem to regard such text as unnecessarily harsh on their readers.
To push back on this, following convention is often the easy thing to do (so not something regarded versus defaulted to).
There's a literary history of form influencing story; there was even a story about a famous example of this on HN recently that discussed this year's Nobel laureate—who notably publishes long novels that play with punctuation conventions: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/against-high-brodernism/
I find that people who make a point out of violating writing norms as part of their house style typically don't have thoughts worth communicating. Nothing is missed by not training myself instead of reading something that flows smoothly.
Has it occurred to anyone who sees capitalization as a must-have for legibility, that an opportunity is being presented to train oneself to read text without traditional capitalization?
Maybe it's because I studied poetry, or because I was a voracious reader of experimental writing when I was younger, but I've probably worked my way through thousands of pages of uncapitalized or unconventionally capitalized writing; I can empathize if it's more difficult for you to read (personally I would consider an absence of paragraph breaks a nearly-unforgivable travesty), and I wouldn't even deny you the opportunity to complain about it.
But I think calling it "a must" for accessibility is perhaps overstating it a bit.