~the case for lowercase~
and other personal guides

why do i limit my use of uppercase letters?

my grammatical choices are more than a typographical rule; they are a radical act of unlearning and a recognition of academia’s history as a white-supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist, heteronormative, ableist institution.

inspired by:

i go out of my way to lowercase beginnings of sentences, lowercase i, and lowercase proper nouns. i want capital letters to earn their place. this simple yet radical act is an acknowledgement of genocide in all its forms. historically, many societal rules, including grammar, are designed to purposefully disadvantage communities. while i can’t single-handedly take down institutions of oppression, i can call friends into conversations about said systems and encourage folks to consider which rules we want to push back against. the case for lowercase is a conversation starter.

i encourage you to be curious of the origin of rules and consider how many rules are designed to divide social classes, segregate races, and gatekeep academia. why is loitering a crime? why can people be fined for a criminal violation? why do some journalists not capitalize the b in Black when speaking about a people? why will doctors prescribe weaker pain killers to women, and even weaker for Black women, and even weaker for queer Black women? why are incarcerated people fighting forest fires and laboring on plantations? why is abortion illegal in certain states? why is hormone therapy illegal in certain states? why does the sat (formerly known as the scholastic aptitude/assessment test) exist? how did lacrosse, with origins with indigenous peoples, become so inherently unwelcoming and White? etc.

so what? language has long been used to separate and devalue people. i don’t want to continue perpetuating that culture. grammatical rules are often determined by predominantly White institutions, and i don’t want to adhere to those institutions blindly.

all of this to say, i'm developing personal grammatical guides.

personal grammatical guides:

lowercase is default; capitalization is earned
- i like to self-determine, through research, cultural influences, and the advice of purposefully disadvantaged groups, what is worthy of capitalization
- what has earned capitalization?
  - races and ethnicities (Black, Latinx, White, etc.)
  - your name
  - addresses, when it makes sense
if the punctuation is designed to clarify, i will adhere to its mainstream usage
- i currently believe in the oxford comma
“.” is declarative or serious while “!” is fun, whimsical, or loud
i use emojis to clarify tone in an effort to be more inclusive to neurodivergent brains and reduce misunderstandings.

summary of why:

because ~aesthetic~
what a marvelously simple yet radical way to protest and start conversations about the way in which “conventional” grammar rules originate to other (verb)
vocabulary and sentence construction can differentiate informal and formal writing perfectly
to express my anti-capitalist beliefs radically and with pun
to bring attention to the perpetuation of racism, othering, and oppression in literacy and education
to challenge automatically capitalizing the self as part of how capitalism stratifies and commodifies us
to unlearn
rules change. period. full stop.

if you would like to join ~ the case for lowercase ~:

resources for unlearning:

~the case for lowercase~ and other personal guides

my grammatical choices are more than a typographical rule; they are a radical act of unlearning and a recognition of academia’s history as a white-supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist, heteronormative, ableist institution.

~the case for lowercase~
and other personal guides