i ran into this a lot while building the skeleton of a site i have here, so I figured I'd noodle about with a Post about it. I like to play with letter casing A Lot.^[1] I do much of my writing on my phone, where i have carefully excised as much automation from my keyboard^[2] so it it does not capitalize for me and will not offer good word suggestions nor autocomplete. This is so it feels like my physical keyboards, which also do not do these things, for one, but also so i can carefully case my Letters.

The easiest thing to explain, I think, is Important Things or Conceptual Things In a Way That is Close To, IDK, Platonic Ideals. If something is important or has a stiff vibe or needs a little underlining or otherwise be offset, I'll capitalize that. I think this is pretty common; the main voice in Piranesi does it, and I was like, "Yes, Rad, you Get it". Please Be Sure To Read Them As Capitalized, as you do with proper names.

the medium thing to explain is sentences not capitalized sometimes: sometimes I do it to soften the start of a statement; othertimes I do it because it's a new paragraph and it feels better to start that one that way. othertimes, it's because I forget 🤷

the hardest to explain is i. I and i are not interchangeable generally, but both refer to me. i often use i to show reluctance, smallness, unsureness, or something i don't want to be held up against a wall and interrogated about. i also use it for softness, unmasked thoughts i actively have to put aside the mask for, and sweetness. I is pretty standard, though; it's what people expect, it's what was grilled into me from my english teachin' mom and the roughly 80 billion books I've read and miles of scrolled articles. It can indicate swapping between masked and unkasked, or soft and hard statements, or things I'm willing to explore more argumentatively and things I don't want pushed at with any semblance of negativity, especially if you note a lot of i statements mixed with I statements

Also, unfortunately, my use case can mean absolutely nothing beyond "it felt right in the moment (and I no longer recall that moment)". English is , uh. not my first language I guess^[3] and I am a wonderfully human narrator. Once I got over my Extremely Precise Grammar phase I've gone feral, as I ought to be