

HN, why do you auto-capitalize posts? - lexy0202

Seeing IOS instead of iOS is slightly irritating. Can users not be trusted to capitalize post titles themselves?
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xvolter
I'd assume it's because IOS is better than ios - and no, user's tend not to
capitalize, just read any Facebook or Twitter feed/stream. The general
population is poor at almost all aspects of the English language. It's also
not worth making exceptions for words like "iOS" when "IOS" works equally well
to the average consumer.

However, more important, I think they do it because people tend to auto post
to Hacker News from the bookmarklet and similar services, and it's better to
have things similar rather than a bunch of differently formatted titles. Makes
it more appealing to the eye and therefore easier to read.

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lexy0202
I would have thought that the kind of people who post on HN are going to be
better at correct use of English than those on your average Facebook/Twitter
stream.

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xvolter
Maybe 2-3 years ago, but nowadays Hacker News is just as commonly used as many
news services. It's also not only about the correct use of English, many
people can use English correctly but do not bother" capitalizing or
punctuating since it's "annoying" to do on mobile devices - and since the
people who do use Hacker News tend to be more forward-moving with technology,
they tend to read and make posts on Hacker News from their phones and mobile
devices which they do not bother correcting themselves on.

