This is a Very precarious situation for Yahoo. Microsoft would no doubt make Yahoo a much more powerful and stronger company. Yet, for Yahoo, Jerry Yang must confort his shareholders first and foremost. What I don't understand is how did Yahoo get in trouble financially in the first place? He should fire his CFO.

Cordially,

John Matos / Owner
International Network Services
Technical Writer

in the net economy everyone has a style, even more in the high profile lead management role. nobody in the business arena would look at Yang and say he is unprofessional or lacks a command of the language. it is just his communication style to his audience- his troopers.

He can't be bothered to follow a simple convention (though he remembers to add the bang sign at the end of "Yahoo!".) The take-home message I get is "hey, i'm too busy to press a shift key now and then so all my readers will have to work just a little harder so i don't have to." I guess we should be grateful he condescends to punctuate.

I find it interesting that the writr of this article wrote the following;
"Oddly, Yang chooses not to use capitalization in his communication, something which has apparently always been his way. As I writer, I cringe at someone of his stature not using the accepted form of English, and would think he'd be concerned that it would make him look unprofessional, but according to others, that is exactly the point. He's just a regular guy, a scrappy underdog, some believe this conveys; he really "cares" about the Internet.

I never knew that "As I writer" was correct English. I guess the old adage of throwing stones holds true. It's rough getting all the egg off of ones face!

i don't necessarily agree that the use of lower case letters imbues one's text with any additional meaning or connotation. it is more a personal style preference, and where i can get away with it, i, too, eschew caps. most of my years at the keyboard were spent writing program code; that is the likely source of my preference. is it legitimate to carry that over to writing used in regular communication? not really - but that's not a resounding "no". why can't new forms of communication have the latitude to define some of their own rules? that's how language, writing and communication has progressed through the ages.

As long as he uses correct spelling and grammar (a much harder task than capitalizing correctly), I don't care whether he uses the shift key or not.

I don't think it takes any longer to read uncapitalized prose, if the punctuation is correct.

I just hope that those who have read my previous post have noticed my mispelling of the word "writr". We all have egg scrubbing to do at one time or another:)

capitalization is slow. i'm a true-blue no-typewriter history computer generation guy and anyone who has ever used a chat client or compiler knows that capital letters in text is unnecessary. unless the reader is a total idiot or somehow cant make the concession to avoid using more than one type of letter for each 'r', 'l' or 'p',why bother. it is not what degreed writers have deemed a convention, but if anthing is true of the iternet and it's format it is that it has evolved the standard conventions to suit its nature of immediacy, and shown us that one convention will not fit all. Personaly i think his use of all-lower case reveals him as a true net-citiizen, moving forward into the net-vernacular instead of relying on an other medium's method. Face it, this isn't harper's baazar, this is the next.

Maybe Mr. Yang is the reincarnation of ee cummings :)

Every generation and cultural sector chooses those things that are favorites in that place and time, and thus defines them. Some of you choose life on-line to define a portion of your norms. Call it a self definition, or call it an excuse to do or be what you choose. Been there. And you'll define the standards and rules of the English language for your place and time. Keep in mind for every revisionist group there will be purists, and the contrast will serve to divide the two groups. The division will be more than social circles - ie. the hip v.s. the non-hip. It's ok now, but later it will matter. In the case of Jerry maybe you're granting him too much purpse that is really more about you than him. Maybe his aversion to caps is just a lazy 'style' he developed in keyboarding, and by keeping that lazy habit it's his way of sticking to the man, and it has nothing to do with being trendy at all. Or not.

Jerry is an idiot. Doesn't matter how bad he wants to look like a regular guy. Anyone at that corporate level needs to know how to write professionally, and punctuate at a level above 3rd grade in elementary school. I'm just a regular guy in a large corporate environment, and my take-away after reading his memo is that he's just an idiot trying to placate the masses.

I think the absence of upper case in Yang's emails means he is idealy suited for assimilation b Microsoft. Their software has always been case insensitive when at all possible and it is indicative that they will accept such an all-round lower case no-caps required guy like Yang into their fold with open arms.

We are on a racetrack. Everyone around the world is on the move towards that "global village". Everyone hopes or expects that in due time the rest of the world will learn their language.

In my humble opinion, all over the world the US/Canada flavour of English is rapidly becoming EVERYONE's 2nd language. This for a number of reasons, certainly not the least of which is the *relative* simplicity. Let's keep this process going, experiment and simplify where you can!

i see no reason why he, u or i need that shift key as often. when i write in french i use it less often, whereas writing in german it is up and down (and often wrong at that!). once upon a time we wrote ENTIRE BOOKS IN UPPER-CASE BECAUSE ASCII AND THE PRINTER CHAINS HAD NO LOWER-CASE LETTERS. hey man, once you are used to it, u'll see, u haven't lost anything. languages need to evolve and be adapted. granted, it takes a while to get used to new words, forms and spellings, as in "learn another language".

Every generation and cultural sector chooses those things that are favorites in that place and time, and thus defines them. Some of you choose life on-line to define a portion of your norms. Call it a self definition, or call it an excuse to do or be what you choose. Been there. And you'll define the standards and rules of the English language for your place and time. Keep in mind for every revisionist group there will be purists, and the contrast will serve to divide the two groups. The division will be more than social circles - ie. the hip v.s. the non-hip. It's ok now, but later it will matter. In the case of Jerry maybe you're granting him too much purpse that is really more about you than him. Maybe his aversion to caps is just a lazy 'style' he developed in keyboarding, and by keeping that lazy habit it's his way of sticking to the man, and it has nothing to do with being trendy at all. Or not.

Not to mention your misspelling of "mispelling"...

In an e-mail -- or IM client -- it is no big deal. But in a letter to investors or an annual report for the SEC, such disregard for the conventions of the English language would be rightly regarded as carelessness or lassitude, neither of which is a desirable quality in a CEO. Adopting certain conventions as far as capitalization or incorporating IM-speak into written communication is not "changing the language." If you want to see how much the language has progressed, try reading Chaucer in its original form.

Some of the posts above are exemplary of why this is not a sea change: their usage is simply incorrect. Such as the use of apostrophes in possessive pronouns (Julian: it's format) or disagreement between nouns and verbs (kamran saeed: language, writing and communication has progressed). Unless there is a common understanding of the message between writer and reader, then no communication has occurred.

Skipping caps is an old programmer's convention, especially in the UNIX world. It isn't because he's lazy or illiterate. It's because he came from the development world.

Most folks in Silicon Valley who are a little older than twelve will be somewhat familiar with the style.