Why is danah boyd lowercase

First, there's my mother's original desire to have balance and my adult appreciation of that as a child, i was just cranky that i could never find anything with my name on it. In fact, my entire name balances quite conveniently, in all of its forms: danah michele mattas beard boyd. There's something elegant about that. There's also the political. I was always bothered by the fact that the first person singular pronoun is capitalized in english - i always thought it was quite self-righteous.

Or, as Douglas Adams noted, "Capital letters were always the best way of dealing with things you didn't have a good answer to. Why not capitalize 'we' or 'they'? Yes, i love the work of bell hooks. So, i started researching where the capitalization of said pronoun came from and was quite stunned to find that it was always capitalized because it always appeared as the first word in a sentence, never stuck in the middle.

And then, when it started appearing in the middle, it started getting capitalized out of convention and because people worried that it would get lost in script. Of course, "It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many other languages "You" is capitalized and the "i" is lower case" journalist Sydney J.

Well, we're in a digital age and the computer conveniently spaces the 'i' quite properly to make it recognizable, so i gave up on giving it such a special level of importance - it is referring to me, right? I thought an attempt at minimalizing the individualization could start at home. Asked 10 years, 5 months ago. Active 9 years, 9 months ago. Viewed times. Improve this question. James Waldby - jwpat7 Peter Mortensen Peter Mortensen 3, 7 7 gold badges 32 32 silver badges 37 37 bronze badges.

In a similar case, either the poet e e cummings or his publisher decided he didn't want his name capitalized, and people have generally obliged.

I think she is crazy, but if that's how she chooses to write her own name, then just leave her be. Of course you are under no obligation to write it and the pronoun I in small letters, as she does.

At any rate she does capitalize departments of corporations, so she she's probably not interested in consistency. In general it is incorrect to refer to people deliberately in a way other than they want. You may believe that internal capitals are wrong, but if Joe McFlynn spells his name with one, calling him Joe Mcflynn is incorrect. In the same vein, it's incorrect to call her Danah Boyd.

Any confusion that arises from not capitalizing her name you can lay at her feet, if that helps. For those who want to read the mind-numbing details, her Wikipedia article's talk pages 1 , 2 , 3 , and 4 contain more than you would ever want to know on the topic.

I've seen bell hooks cited in academic writing in all-lowercase, which lends support to the idea that we are allowed in writing to call people, within reason, what they want to be called.

This list of larger-than-life innovators and influencers include such luminaries as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. She may not be a household name, but danah boyd who prefers to spell her name with lowercase has become a leading thinker and researcher on the effects of technology on society and our children.

In her book It's Complicated, she argued that social media provides an important space for youth to express themselves and to engage with each other and with society.