How Apple's Camel Case Hurts the English Language

You may have never really noticed the weird capitalization pattern on iPhones; or perhaps you just thought it was part of Apple's brilliant marketing schtick. In reality, though, this weird mid-word capitalization has been around for a while, and is commonly known as 'camel case' (because of the visual "hump" that a nested capitalized letter gives a word).

Caleb Crain, in a great article for The New York Times, takes a cursory look at the evolution of camel case over the years. While he acknowledges that the practice really exploded after the tech boom, -- which saw a proliferation of software coding that didn't require spaces -- Crain traces the whole history of word spacing. In early Greek and Latin, most books were read aloud by monks so spaces between words didn't exist. When the texts were spoken, they still made sense. Spacing eventually flourished once people figured out it made texts easier for the eye, not the voice, to read. Thus began silent reading, a practice that, as paleographer Paul Saenger claims, "emboldened the reader because it placed the source of his curiosity completely under his personal control."

Crain argues that the effect of camel case is thus "regressive," and that corporations like Apple use it to make sure that "we have to say corporations' trademarks aloud to be sure of what we're looking at." It's an extreme argument and one that probably isn't intended to be taken seriously.

But take the case of the iPhone: If camel case somehow reduces our personal autonomy by stripping the power of silent reading, what does this mean about the iPhone itself -- a device which (theoretically at least) gives us more autonomy over our lives? Doesn't the "i" kinda signify some sort of ego-enhancement? And what about other languages, like Thai or Chinese, which don't have spaces or uppercase, and thus translate iPhone without the "hump"? It's enough to make a head spin, which is perhaps why Crain's final words of advice are the best: "Don't let your Iphone make the rules. You don't have to buy their language. It already belongs to you." [From: The New York Times]

Tags: apple, camelcase, english, iphone, ipod, language, top