I disagree. I think the bar is "does this text accurately convey the intended meaning and is comfortable to read?", and I think it's interesting and worth thinking about that written English largely still meets that bar when you remove capitalization. Capizalization mostly doesn't encode significant additional information (yes, there are counter-examples - the article we're talking about actually does capitalize acronyms) or enhances ergonomics all that much.
This is really more a social thing and about what the choice not to use capitalization communicates, i.e. you may be reacting negatively because you read it as a "I do not care to conform" or "I do not care about your appraisal of my writing" marker. Which is understandable, but I wonder if that isn't a too-quick judgement to serve as a rule.
Nah DuDE if I wrItE liKE thIS DO u AUdoMAticalYLY geT annoyINgED? Yes.
So why the heck is not capitalizing your sentences ok? Language is a tool to communicate with the masses. We have rules and standards so everyone can understand them. If you can't do that effectively, then you have failed in your communication.
> So why the heck is not capitalizing your sentences ok?
The two examples aren't the same, and the reasons a reader experiences discomfort reading your example text are different. They're about ergonomics. The erratic variations in letter footprints and the up-and-down-and-up from the ascender line to the x-height and back affect reading speed. It's also spurious; the capitalization style in your example doesn't add additional information.
Try giving some thought to capitalization along those lines. Does capitalization add information that otherwise isn't explicit? How does it affect reading speed?
The anwers are roughly "yes, sometimes" and "yes, sometimes" (the latter depends a lot on how you define "reading speed/performance"; "reading" decomposes into a set of different types of interacting with text, like searching, information/keyword retention, etc). You can call this a good case for capitalization, but I'm not convinced it's a given, and competing writing systems do get by well without it.
> We have rules and standards so everyone can understand them.
Sorta. "Understand" is a big topic to broach, see above. It's of course true that shared language and shared orthography enable sophisticated communication and grease its wheels. And in that light, not conforming may suggest an exclusionary attitude (just like e.g. excessive use of jargon can be motivated by tribalism). But it's not where I'd personally draw the line; I'd read a text rather than dismiss it beforehand based solely on a lack of capital letters.
> If you can't do that effectively, then you have failed in your communication.
The many other comments discussing the actual information content of the text seem to suggest that it hasn't.
Does capitalization add information that otherwise isn't explicit?
Technically the (tiny, one-pixel) period is there, but personally I cue off capital letters rather than punctuation when dividing sentences in my head. They are also helpful when skimming. They provide easy-to-spot anchors at which to resume reading.
Seriously, just look at what I've written. Blur your eyes and slide over the text. You can see the capitol letters from a mile away, can't you? While the periods fade into the page.
Aye, that's one of the things in capitalization's pro-column (it's what I meant with "searching" in there).
Of course there's a complex interaction between letter and punctuation design there - if we didn't use capital letters, our full stop marks might be bigger instead. And perhaps that would be more elegant than having two versions of every letter. Now, that's of course a "what if ..." and not a practical argument that should affect your blog post today. (Nor is it an exhaustive argument, emphasized sentence beginnings aren't the same as emphasized sentence ends.)
But it's super-interesting that you bring up periods, because they're a great example of rules vs. the reality of written communication. The rules require ending sentences in periods, but a vast number of people start dropping them when the medium has an implicit full stop, like chats (IRC, SMS, ...) do (line/message end = full stop). Instead the period becomes repurposed as a sort of "aggression mark": http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115726/period-our-simples...
This is really more a social thing and about what the choice not to use capitalization communicates, i.e. you may be reacting negatively because you read it as a "I do not care to conform" or "I do not care about your appraisal of my writing" marker. Which is understandable, but I wonder if that isn't a too-quick judgement to serve as a rule.