Proper Names - Definition

[_Richard_Archer-Jones_]

I would like to mention something about this fashion of giving proper names and titles small initial letters. It looks absolutely awfull through my designers eyes. Is it not true that in the written word a proper name is defined by a capital letter? Otherwise, how would you know if it was a proper name or not? Therefore, does it not follow that if a written word does not have a capital letter it cannot by definition be a proper name?

Therefore, in such cases as that rubbish and ludicrously expensive 2012 London Olympics logo the word 'london' on the logo is actually just gobbledygook because without a capital letter it cannot be a proper name and as far as I know there is no such word as 'london'. The only way it could be a proper name is if the first letter was a capital 'i', but is there such a place as Iondon (pronounced 'Eye-ondon')? And if there is, what Olympics are being held there in 2012?

You have to have some way of defining a proper name otherwise confusion can be the result. Example:-

1. We came across a Ford in the road.
2. We came across a ford in the road.

I consider the ignoring of grammer to such an extent as this to be not justified by 'artistic liscense'. It is a poor design that does so in my opinion.

[Guest]

Yep, it annoys me too. One of those form/function debates I suppose, but in my experience in advertising at least, you kind of miss the point when you throw function under the bus in favor of form.

[_Dominic_Hurley_]

Doesn't bother me. In text, yes, I am a stickler for grammar, but in a logo or similar design situation I am far more flexible. You may not like the London logo (I've not seen it myself), but you obviously were in no doubt what it meant, so I don't really see the problem. (By the bye, wasn't Tschichold part of that movement to get rid of capitals in German? Not quite the same thing, I know, but equally distressing to some at the time, I'm sure.)

[_Herb_V_B_]

Dom said: " ... wasn't Tschichold part of that movement to get rid of
capitals in German ..."

Yes - following in the footsteps of Herbert Bayer. Interestingly (to
me, anyway), when Bayer became the art and design consultant to
Atlantic Richfield (ARCO) in 1966, he was instrumental in making
Helvetica the corporate font, and had backed away from his phonetic
alphabet and the abandonment of upper case.

archie and mehitabal notwithstanding.

- Herb

[Thomas Phinney]

It's one thing to get rid of capitals on proper names in running text, and a completely different thing to do it in a logo. I am a stickler for good grammar in general, but I'm not going to worry about doing a logotype that uses all lower case.

Cheers,

T

[_Dominic_Hurley_]

I also have no major objection to brandnames using internal capitalisation (like InDesign), which violate the traditional rules of capitalisation, but I do tend to agree with Bringhurst about resisiting the "private ownership" of words. (I wish he'd gone into more detail on that point.) This is why I would change ee cummings to EE Cummings.

I've since looked at that Olympics logo and realised I had seen it before (when it first came out and got a lot of bad press). I don't like it myself, but it's not because of the lowercase L.

[_Richard_Archer-Jones_]

Dominic, #2 quote:-

"You may not like the London logo (I've not seen it myself), but you obviously were in no doubt what it meant, so I don't really see the problem."

Mmmm, that's a very weak argument. There are unusual circumstances that mean I understand the text on that logo. Not every logo has such media coverage. But surely, shouldn't we be celebrating capitals, like the ancient monks did? There's so much design potential in a capital letter, I wish designers would loosen up, use their imaginations a bit more and take advantage of what is there, waiting to be used. That's another reason why I think it's a bad design. It's lazy, it's a 'don't care' attitude. It's not using your designer's talent.

Here's the London Olympics logo:-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/olympics_2012/6718243.stm

How such a logo (even animated), or any logo, can cost £400,000 (twice the price of a 3 bedroom house around these parts last time I looked) is totally beyond my understanding. I'm still waiting for an itemised explanation for such a price, and how such a large portion of the Olympic budget could be used in such a way.

Dominic, #2 quote:-

" ... wasn't Tschichold part of that movement to get rid of capitals in German?"

Gee whizzo! How the heck would that work? How, and what is more to the point, WHY would you want to get rid of capitals?

I think it's all a matter of boundaries. We all have our different boundaries and to me this is going beyond those boundaries in the name of art. I have no problem with 'InDesign', that looks perfectly acceptable to me, it just looks like two separate words joined together, but if they had used 'indesign' then I would have a problem. That is going too far for artistic form and it just doesn't work.

Someone else sometime ago mentioned that guy EE Cummings who writes his name as ee cummings and my answer was 'good job his first name wasn't Ian' (ie cummings), or his second name George (eg cummings) :)

Also, through my eyes the lower case use for proper names actually looks awfull. We have a retail company here in the UK called Halfords and some years ago they changed the way they displayed their name to 'halfords' (on an orange background) and I think it looks absolutely terrible. Makes me crindge every time I see it.

To be fair though, every now and again I do see a logo that uses lower case and it does look good (can't think of any right now), but that's very rare, and I feel it would have looked even better if they had been more adventurous with the available capitals. To my way of thinking, the lower case use in both proper names and titles is a 'cop out', and not really a very good design.

[_Dominic_Hurley_]

>Mmmm, that's a very weak argument.

Obviously, I don't think so. I think you would have been able to recognise the word even if there hadn't been media coverage of the deisgn - I certainly did. So, if someone can understand a proper noun in lowercase in the typeface chosen, then that for me is sufficient reason for it to be considered as an option in the design process. It's not a case of not "celebrating capitals"; rather it's precisely a case of designers "us[ing] their imaginations a bit more and tak[ing] advantage of what is there, waiting to be used". Only you want to restrict their imaginations and not let them take advantage of the design possibilities inherent in lowercasing words that we are used to seeing capitalised. I really don't see how you can accept unconventional capitalisation like "InDesign" but not "london". To me, that's just plain illogical. I think you should heed your own advice and "loosen up".

>WHY would you want to get rid of capitals?

At that time, Tschichold was enthusiastically advocating the New Typography, which stressed efficiency and celebrated the possibilities of new technology. He championed the use of the sans serif face and suggested dropping capitals, which in German were used for all (most?) nouns (I presume they still are). Even though he later stepped back from some of his proclamations, that early work is still seen as ground-breaking and expert typesetting. He was one who was truly able to use his imagination and wasn't scared of breaking rules in the search for good typography.

[_Richard_Archer-Jones_]

Dominic, #7, in answer to my comment "Mmmm, that's a very weak argument." you answered:-

"Obviously, I don't think so. I think you would have been able to recognise the word even if there hadn't been media coverage of the deisgn - I certainly did."

Well, you would need to have heard of London and the fact that it is hosting the 2012 Olympics. It isn't really a good precedent if it is reliant on the public having a certain amount of existing knowledge. What if it was a logo for a new company called, say, Locon? And they displayed their name as locon?

This Tschichold fella. I still don't understand how you could get rid of capitals. Perhaps the German language has too many, I don't know, but how can you get rid of them all? You'd have to have some other method of giving text order and making it easy to read. Can you imagine my text here with absolutely no capitals? It would look a right mess!!!!! (Hey ..... carefull now!).

Dominic, #7, quote:-

"It's not a case of not "celebrating capitals"; rather it's precisely a case of designers "us[ing] their imaginations a bit more and tak[ing] advantage of what is there, waiting to be used"."

Hee hee, good attempt at using my words against me. But, the way I see things must be different to most other people because when I see a word that does not have an initial capital I just do not see a proper name. Through my eyes the two go together, they cannot be separated. No capital, no proper name (noun), therefore I do not see a lower case letter 'waiting to be used'. It's like giving a sports car a tractor engine (that's waiting to be used) and calling that 'using your imagination'. I see it as 'dumbing down' and going against the definition, just as lower case letters are 'dumbing down' and going against the definition. The fact of the matter is that a sports car does not have a tractor engine, and as soon as it is given one it ceases to be a sports car. Just as a proper name does not have a lower case letter, and as soon as it is given one it ceases to be a proper name.

I see no similarity between the extra capitalisation in 'InDesign' and the decapitalisation in 'london'. 'InDesign' is a proper name, and they have given it an intitial capital letter, that is all that is required for the word to be a proper name. The fact that it has another capital within the word I don't see as breaking rules to such an extent as 'london' does. 'InDesign' is the two words 'In' and 'Design' joined together. If they were separated, the word 'Design' would have a capital would it not? All they've done is join the two together, I don't see that as a serious rule break. It still looks like a proper name to me. Now if they had capitalised another letter, as in 'IndEsign', now that would be very weird. That looks as weird as 'london'. They both look like gobledegook.

My point is you can bend the rules to a certain extent for art's sake, but I think there are boundaries, and I see this as being a boundary (just as a pile of bricks and an unmade bed is going beyond that artistic boundary), the breaking of which I do not consider very imaginative.

[_Herb_V_B_]

You seem very hung up on current usage, which certainly hasn't always
been the case (either upper OR lower).

The minuscule/majuscule distinction is a relatively recent addition.
Certainly Sumerian, Aramaic, Phnician, and even Latin had only one
basic form of each charcter. Until the 19th century the use of
capitals was almost random, as was spelling. See the US Declaration of
Independence for an example.

While you are steadfast in using the form of a letter to recognize its
meaning, you appear to be less concerned with WHICH letter(s) to use
in the first place, which would seem to me to be much more important.

In the following examples taken from your messages, your intent, and
the intended word, is usually obvious - but so are london and e e
cummings.

awfull
crindge
grammer
liscense
carefull
intitial
gobbledegook

This isn't meant as a criticism of your spelling, your typing skills,
or your proof-reading (don't we ALL proof-read our e-mails?) but to
demonstrate that each of us have different things that interfere with
our unhampered interpretation of text. Depending on context, such
things as multi-colored (or multi-coloured) text, random words in
bold, and undifferentiated zeroes and ohs or ones and ells, are much
more disturbing to me than the use or non-use of upper-case glyphs.

- Herb

[_Richard_Archer-Jones_]

Hello Herb. Quote #9:-

"While you are steadfast in using the form of a letter to recognize its meaning, you appear to be less concerned with WHICH letter(s) to use in the first place, which would seem to me to be much more important."

Yes, I realise my spelling is not good, but I wouldn't have thought that more important. In a finished piece of art it could be AS important, but I think the point is I do not miss spell words deliberately and for a finished piece of art work I would make sure the spelling is correct. The use of lower case letters for proper names is a deliberate act.

I don't see the relevance that the upper and lower case distinction is a fairly recent addition.

"Depending on context, such things as multi-colored (or multi-coloured) text, random words in bold, and undifferentiated zeroes and ohs or ones and ells, are much more disturbing to me than the use or non-use of upper-case glyphs."

I find this sentence a bit confusing ("zeroes and ohs" etc.) but I understand that we all have different things "that interfere with our unhampered interpretation of text". That is why it is important not to stray too far away from the rules under the excuse of artistic liscence. But it seems to me that capitals for proper names (whether in a piece of text or on its own in a logo) is as fundamental as full stops at the end of a sentence and capitals at the begining.

[Guest]

I think a common ground for either side of this debate would be the basic design rule that you need to design for your market.
For example, if designing a logo that needed to appeal to English or Writing field professionals one would have to accept the fact that no matter how "nice" a lower case letter on a proper name may look, your audience is going to automatically read it as a mistake. This is bad marketing.
However, if you're aiming at 10-18 year olds today, (the generation that spends more time "texting" than writing clinically), the London logo may draw the response "omg 2 kewl" or "OMG 2 kewl" if they wanted to emphasize their emotional excitement for the piece. :)
To each their own. Me, it bothers, I envision red pen marks and points-off whenever I see a lower case letter starting a proper name or a sentence. But I also accept that this reaction is no longer the norm.

[Neil_Keller]

>But it seems to me that capitals for proper names (whether in a piece of text or on its own in a logo) is as fundamental as full stops at the end of a sentence and capitals at the beginning.

I think that Heather has a good handle on the capitalization issue. I'm no youngster, being a graphic designer for some four decades. But if the product/service/company/audience is right, I have absolutely no problem with the appropriateness of an all lowercase logotype. Or an all caps one, for that matter.

I think the London Olympics logo sucks, but it's for aesthetic reasons other than it's lack of capitalization.

As long as the subject has been brought up, one thing that does bother me, even in informal writing, is bad spelling. And considering that there is a spellchecker including a red warning underscore built into these Forums' message boxes, it seriously reduces the acceptability of misspelling by those for whom English is the first language. And spelling diminishes the credibility of the poster in the mind of the reader.

Neil

[Neil_Keller]

>But it seems to me that capitals for proper names (whether in a piece of text or on its own in a logo) is as fundamental as full stops at the end of a sentence and capitals at the beginning.

I think that Heather has a good handle on the capitalization issue. I'm no youngster, being a graphic designer for some four decades. But if the product/service/company/audience is right, I have absolutely no problem with the appropriateness of an all lowercase logotype. Or an all caps one, for that matter.

I think the London Olympics logo sucks, but it's for aesthetic reasons other than its lack of capitalization.

As long as the subject has been brought up, one thing that does bother me, even in informal writing, is bad spelling. And considering that there is a spellchecker including a red warning underscore built into these Forums' message boxes, it seriously reduces the acceptability of misspelling by those for whom English is the first language. And poor spelling diminishes the credibility of the poster in the mind of the reader.

Neil

[OldBob1957]

LOL!!! Edited to hide stupidity :)

I was asking about spell check. My guess is it's the BIG RED BUTTON at the bottom marked CHECK SPELLING.

It's been a long week with too little sleep.

Sigh.

[_Dominic_Hurley_]

Richard,

>It isn't really a good precedent if it is reliant on the public having a certain amount of existing knowledge. What if it was a logo for a new company called, say, Locon? And they displayed their name as locon?

It seems to me that you're using a bad piece of design to make a somewhat different point. The font used should always be chosen with care. For example, when I was choosing a font that would be used in reports with lots of alphanumeric references (with the letters in small caps and the numerals in OSFs), I looked for fonts with OSFs 1s that didn't look like small cap Is. If I were designing something using "london" in lowercase, I would choose a font that clearly distinguished between the l and the I. There are ways to do all lowercase without compromising legibility.

>I see no similarity between the extra capitalisation in 'InDesign' and the decapitalisation in 'london'.

I don't follow your argument at all. They both ignore the conventions of standard capitalisation. To decry one and not the other is simply illogical, to me. Your rationalisations don't change my view on that.

>My point is you can bend the rules to a certain extent for art's sake, but I think there are boundaries ...

But you yourself have said that you have seen lowercase logos that "look good", so you have undercut your whole argument right there.

>This Tschichold fella.

I have to say, I'm staggered that you call yourself a designer but you haven't heard of Jan Tschichold.

Heather,

>if designing a logo that needed to appeal to English or Writing field professionals one would have to accept the fact that no matter how "nice" a lower case letter on a proper name may look, your audience is going to automatically read it as a mistake.

I disagree totally. I know plenty of professionals in the fields of writing, editing, and language who are perfectly able to distinguish between a lowercase letter done for effect (whether provocative or aesthetic) and a mistake.

[Neil_Keller]

Dominic,

I understand and accept your point, but I've also known writing and editing professionals who are sticklers for "proper" usage.

Neil

[_Dominic_Hurley_]

I really think you're not giving them enough credit if you're saying that they can't distinguish between a mistake and a deliberately unconventional usage. Most people I know who work with words and languages have a great appreciation of wordplay, (visual) puns, and the like.

[Neil_Keller]

Dominic,<br /><br />One would think! <LOL><br /><br />Neil

[_Richard_Archer-Jones_]

Heather, #11, quote:-

"However, if you're aiming at 10-18 year olds today, (the generation that spends more time "texting" than writing clinically), the London logo may draw the response "omg 2 kewl" or "OMG 2 kewl" if they wanted to emphasize their emotional excitement for the piece. 🙂 "

Cripes, that text jargon has got me stumped Heather. But if you are implying that it's alright to ignore grammar for 10-18 year olds I disagree. They are the last ones for whom we should be promoting bad practice. You get such badly typed messages on the Internet message boards. There are some people that don't use any capitals at all, not even in titles. It looks appalling.

Niel, #12, I take your point about bad spelling and I will use the spell checker in future (actually, I hadn't noticed it), but I still don't think accidental miss spelling in informal discussion is as serious as deliberate bad grammar in finished art work.

Domenic, #14, quote:-

"There are ways to do all lowercase without compromising legibility."

Well, fair enough, it's just that I don't see the point in making the problem in the first place. Hit that shift key and stamp out a capital.

As to the 'InDesign' and 'london' debate you state that they "both ignore the conventions of standard capitalization". Yes, but to differing degrees and I think we are both agreed that you can bend the rules to a certain extent for art. At least 'InDesign' looks like a proper name, 'london' does not.

"But you yourself have said that you have seen lowercase logos that "look good", so you have undercut your whole argument right there."

Blimey! How have I done that then? I don't see that such an admission undercuts my argument at all. Art is not black & white, and I did qualify that by stating they were rare cases and they would most probably have still looked better with capitals.

"I have to say, I'm staggered that you call yourself a designer but you haven't heard of Jan Tschichold."

Oh yes, I admit I am most probably not as qualified as you guys, but then with certain aspects of art I don't think you need to be. It's like with music, you can get some professors of music that get so bogged down in theory that they forget the main thing that matters is "Does it sound good?", and you don't need a degree to decide that (but it helps in actually making it sound good). The same with visual art. I did a bit of reading about Mr. Tschichold last week. I learnt that he used no substitute for the loss of capitals in his work, and his reasoning for dropping capitals was this:-

"we write everything in lower case to save time. and besides, why two alphabets, where one will do? why use capital letters if we don't use them when we speak?"

"The lowercase alphabet, it was argued, was easier to learn and to read. it took less space, and was more economical - typesetting was easier and composing machinery (and typewriters) could be simplified."

Now there's a perfect example of what I mean; getting too bogged down in theory. Crumbs, easier to read? How the heck can making text uniform make it easier to read? And what's that about not using capital letters if we don't use them when we speak? They are not there to define how the words should be spoken (as italics or bold can be), they are there purely for visual clarity. Of course it is going to be easier to typeset, saves time in printing, and is cheaper. As for saving space .... well ... gee whiz .... talk about grasping at straws!

Hey, it's good fun this ain't it? Now, let's make sure I click on that old spell checker button :)

[Guest]

i They are the last ones for whom we should be promoting bad practice.

Ah, but there in lays the rub... do you see yourself as an educator or a salesman? If your aim is to educate the public, that is one thing. If your aim is to sell them an iPod (there's some interesting use of capitalization) it's quite another.

Anyway, there was interesting information in a language/culture/and society class I once took about the definition of a language in decline. Languages prosper as they develop more complexity. The idea of being able to express more and more of the subtle nuances of human emotion into speech and the visible representation of that speech. If words are still being added to the lexicon, you're in good shape. If not, start learning Mandarin.
:)

[_Dominic_Hurley_]

>Now, let's make sure I click on that old spell checker button.

Never rely on a spell checker alone. It won't pick up things such as "miss spelling", though it should have picked up "Domenic". (By the bye, I'm assuming you weren't being deliberately ironic with your "You get such badly typed messages on the Internet message boards" statement.)

>Blimey! How have I done that then?

Simply because you started off by saying that the use of lowercase instead of capitals "looks absolutely awfull through my designers eyes", that you didn't consider "the ignoring of grammer to such an extent as this to be ... justified by 'artistic liscense'" and that "It is a poor design that does so in my opinion." Pretty black-and-white statements. But then you admit that "every now and again I do see a logo that uses lower case and it does look good". I can't reconcile how something that looks absolutely awful can also look good.

>Yes, but to differing degrees

I don't see any notable difference between the two. You like the look of "InDesign" but you don't like the look of "london". That's fine, but I don't see why you need to try to justify that aesthetic response by arguing that one bends the rules too much and the other doesn't.

>with certain aspects of art I don't think you need to be [so qualified]

Except that this is a typography forum and Tschichold is acknowledged as one of the giants of typography.

>Now there's a perfect example of what I mean; getting too bogged down in theory.

I suggest you actually look at his work before accusing him of being "bogged down in theory". In my opinion, his typesetting was always nothing short of excellent.

Heather does raise an interesting point - you do seem to be coming at this from the perspective of a teacher or proofreader rather than a designer. You're stuck in your correct capitalisation mindset and forgetting about whether the lowercase works. And it could well be argued that the Olympics logo works - it's certainly lodged itself memorably in your mind.

PS. Where did you get that quote from that you attribute to Tschichold? I found it by googling, but in the reference I found it's not clear at all that he said it.

[_Richard_Archer-Jones_]

Dominic, #20, quote:-

>(By the bye, I'm assuming you weren't being deliberately ironic with your "You get such badly typed messages on the Internet message boards" statement.)

Ha ha ..... I don't know, ya cheeky thing 🙂 But I'm amazed people seem to think bad spelling more important than the miss use, or rather, lack of capitals. Surely, spelling is a much more difficult thing to master. The proper use of capitalization is by comparison much easier to learn and its miss / lack of use is usually deliberate whereas bad spelling is accidental and requires time to correct.

>Simply because you started off by saying that the use of lowercase instead of capitals "looks absolutely awfull through my designers eyes", that you didn't consider "the ignoring of grammer to such an extent as this to be ... justified by 'artistic liscense'" and that "It is a poor design that does so in my opinion." Pretty black-and-white statements. But then you admit that "every now and again I do see a logo that uses lower case and it does look good". I can't reconcile how something that looks absolutely awful can also look good.

Well, I don't see why I can't have strong views about something and yet there to be certain cases in that area were my views are not so strong. It's like having strong views about a certain type of music, say, jazz. Someone can say "Oh I hate jazz, it's absolutely awfull, but yet, I quite like that certain piece by Nina Simone".

You state about 'InDesign' and 'london' that you "don't see any notable difference between the two". Well the main and very notable difference in my opinion is that 'InDesign' has a capital letter. That gives it some kind of importance and lifts it up above other words, that gives it a proper name look. Whereas 'london' just looks like a normal word of no particular significance.

Now Dominic, here's where I'm going to annoy you even more. Heather, #19, points out:-

>iPod (there's some interesting use of capitalization)

And yes, I agree, there is an interesting use of capitalization, and one which, although at first I did have reservations, I can accept. Again, like 'InDesign' this is a combination of two words. Not quite sure what the 'i' stands for (is it Internet?) but at least there is a capital there and also in an acceptable place i.e. at the begining of a word. You see, as I've already mentioned, proper names are defined by the use of capitalization. As my example in #1 with the word 'ford' shows, you have to have some way of defining a proper name. I don't see it makes any difference whether it is in a sentence or on it's own. Imagine the word 'ford' on it's own on a logo. What would it tell you? Does it refer to a river crossing or a car? Why make such a meaning so dependant on other knowledge of the logo? Is that good practice? In general is it not better that the less the public are confused the better?

>I suggest you actually look at his (Tschichold's) work before accusing him of being "bogged down in theory". In my opinion, his typesetting was always nothing short of excellent.

Well, fair enough, I will. But if he did not use capitals then that's a bit like a pianist being accurate in his rendition of every note of the music except there is no expression. It's a uniform volume throughout.

>Heather does raise an interesting point - you do seem to be coming at this from the perspective of a teacher or proofreader rather than a designer.

Well, notice I am refering to aesthetics, what the word looks like, does the word look like a proper name? Is that not the designer's field? In my opinion the lack of proper capitalization looks aesthetically poor. It's all to do with aesthetics, that's the reasoning behind capitals ..... aesthetics.

>And it could well be argued that the Olympics logo works - it's certainly lodged itself memorably in your mind.

Hee hee, it certainly has. It's up there along with Hitler and Tracy Emin's unmade bed. Both made a big impression on me 😞 Yuuieks!!!! (Spell checker watch out)

>PS. Where did you get that quote from that you attribute to Tschichold? I found it by googling, but in the reference I found it's not clear at all that he said it.

Yes, you are right. sorry, (hands up) the result of trying to do this at work and rushing. I've found the page, here:-

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=NQKgLGhFvWAC&pg=PA44&lpg=PA44&dq=
Tschichold+and+capital+letters&so
urce=web&ots=ptiNyGHVV0&sig=YfRBatpfga7pZgtVVuVBVmnYvDc&hl=en&sa=X&oi
=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result#PPA44,M1

(Had to split this up as it was knocking the text of the whole thread hard up to the left, so be carefull copy and pasting it)

Should I have perhaps stated that it was 'their' reasoning for not using capitals instead of 'his' reasoning? Did Tschichold have different reasons for not using capitals? What was his actual decapitalization method? I'm finding it difficult to find.

[_Dominic_Hurley_]

>Someone can say "Oh I hate jazz, it's absolutely awfull, but yet, I quite like that certain piece by Nina Simone".

In which case, the first clause is incorrect - they don't hate jazz, they just hate some jazz. So I guess you're saying that you don't like lowercase being used for caps some of the time but at other times you don't mind them. Which makes me wonder why you started this thread at all, why you were so vociferous in your denouncement of the practice in that first post, and why you keep making such statements as "In my opinion the lack of proper capitalization looks aesthetically poor" when in fact you've admitted that, in your opinion, sometimes it "does look good".

>But I'm amazed people seem to think bad spelling more important than the miss use, or rather, lack of capitals.

I think people are amused by your strong desire to uphold one convention (the use of capitals) while at the same time happily ignoring another (correct spelling). You seem so concerned about people not being confused between a ford and a Ford but you don't seem to care that they could equally be confused between miss spell and misspell.

>but at least there is a capital there and also in an acceptable place i.e. at the begining of a word.

*Near* the beginning, not *at* the beginning, I would have said. Needless to say, I think that's a ridiculous rationalisation. Presumably, then, you'd have had no problem with the Olympics logo if it had only spelled the name in question lOndon, then? As for iPod being two words joined together, if the "i" were a word, then surely it should have been "I"? Or does the capitalisation matter only when you don't like how much a design has cost?

>It's all to do with aesthetics, that's the reasoning behind capitals ..... aesthetics.

Hang on. Your earlier arguments were all about meaning (ie, needing capitals because they denote proper nouns), not aesthetics. But you're now confirming what I suspected from the start - you don't really care about avoiding confusion or maintaining grammatical standards, you just don't like the look of lowercase. And that's fine, but it seems to me you're limiting yourself as a designer by refusing to consider the possibilities unconventional capitalisation can offer.

[Guest]

i Not quite sure what the 'i' stands for (is it Internet?)

There are varying opinions. Apple likes the "i". iMac, iPod. Some people think "internet" as you suggest. Others think it's more of a play on "personal"... i.e. "my" Pod, "my" Mac, reduced to a reference to self, therefore "i".