Gawker: valleywag, lingo

The return of CamelCase

Owen Thomas — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 15:26:57 EDT

If you're not a word nerd, you'll want to skip this post. But for those who pay attention to such matters, a few notes on style. Previous regimes at Valleywag have vociferously rejected CamelCase in company names, but I've reinstated it. While I cringe when I see people incorrectly capitalize the "W" in "Valleywag," I find it equally noisome when people write "Myspace" for "MySpace" or "Linked In" for "LinkedIn." With all due respect to my predecessors, I don't think it makes one look hip; I think, rather, that it makes you look clueless and lazy. Likewise, I'm breaking with the vile Luddite practice of lowercasing "Internet" and "Web," and insisting on their capitalization. Why?

Because they're proper nouns. An "internet" is any interconnected network of networks; a "web," lowercased, is any connection of hyperlinked pages. The Internet, and the World Wide Web — the ones we all connect to — are the only ones we actually care about. If you insist on writing about "the internet," I'll insist on asking, "Which one?"

Just say no to camelcase

Chris Mohney — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 12:00:08 EST

We're waging a one-blog war against camelcase — or medial capitals for you pointy-headed punctuationists — that being the practice of embedding a capital letter in the middle of a word. For example: CamelCase. Typically this happens Valleywise in company names, startup or otherwise. But you'll notice we don't use 'em. No, it's Youtube, Myspace, etc., and say what you will about Powerset, at least they kept just the one capital. OK, sure, sometimes we accidentally forget the fatwa, and we've resigned ourself to "iTunes." Fortunately, the current vogue of pleasingly euphonious or alarmingly clunky startup names (see the great but too-infrequently-updated Qwerky) means that names suffer less from camelcase than they used to. But please, at least do us the small courtesy of not crapping on or crediting "ValleyWag."

Mogulspeak: Who would you hire?

Chris Mohney — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 16:00:44 EST

A perennial trope of mogul types — actual and aspiring — is praise by way of offer to hire. You see this a lot when one exec is asked about another whom he or she admires. Typically, Exec A sings the praises of Exec B, and as a capper, proudly claims that he or she would gladly hire Exec B, given the chance. On the face of it, a nice gesture; in reality, a rhetorical move that both absorbs and diminishes the status of the supposedly praised Exec B.

For example, Jason Calacanis is fond of this maneuver (e.g. Amanda Congdon and Lifehacker's Gina Trapani), though he's hardly alone. Robert Scoble even did the same thing for Gina, in agreement with Calacanis. This isn't to say that such hiring love isn't sincere hugs and kisses. It just comes across as a creepy bit of self-love, tossed in as the ultimate expression of appreciation. You are so very, very talented — so talented, in fact, that I would hire you. And I, as we know, am an excellent judge of these things. You've really made it now, kiddo, to have crossed the threshold of hireability for me.

The praising party gets to step on a little of the praise-ee's limelight, while subtly putting the praisee in his or her place. If you agree that the person is talented, well then, of course such an august personage would want to hire them. Such a smart cookie. And the proposed hiring is presented as a brass ring of achievement for the praised, doled out generously by the praising party.

Again, this is not to assign nefarious intent for every occurrence of the practice, or even for the Calacanis and Scoble examples noted above. But there are much more egregious examples out there. Think of particular cases when it's obvious that the praised would never in a million years work for the praiser — that's where the praiser just wants to glom on to the glory train. We're looking for a few of these to run for your amusement. If you come across any particularly "good" ones, send 'em in.