The Secret Life of Words

I enjoy analyzing things. And disclaimer; I will nerd out on you today a bit.

After sharing Seth’s reply to my email yesterday, I could practically hear the screaming disbelief… “he’s a writer and his capitalization and punctuation look like THAT?!?”

And I will admit, I put on my best pensive face and pondered that myself but then I realized it’s BECAUSE he’s a writer that he does it.

A writer knows that everything can be used to express. Not just words, but spacing, line formatting, the use of lower case and upper case letters, a purposefully placed period versus an obligated one. Or….no period at all. Leaving things…open, uncontained, uninhibited, free. With that kind of thoughtfulness a period becomes a REAL statement.

Analyzing the short message makes me feel like I’m in Mr. Kielo’s English class again. Which I loved by the way. Learning to read, analyze and interpret a piece of poetry, Shakespeare, you name it. I found it thrilling because often there would be many possibilities for what the creator meant to express in a piece of work.

So, the short 3 lines. If I were to analyze;

“thanks, Maria”

Not capitalizing “thanks” feels to me like a humble response to a compliment. Capitalizing my name makes me feel respected and acknowledged. ESPECIALLY with the first word of the sentence left uncapitalized. Does that make sense?

keep writing, keep leading.

The uncapitalized K at the beginning makes me feel less like I am being told what to do, and more like I’m being encouraged. Like a gentle nudge. Now. The period. The only period in the whole message. And it happens here. If he wanted me to take anything from this reply it was this. Keep. Going. Period. That one was not lost on me.

we need you

Again, without the capitalization, but also without the period here, reading this feels less like a pressured statement tempting a sense of obligation (which it could easily feel like simply by the impactful nature of the words) and feels more the vibe of “should you choose to accept this mission it could help change the world for the better - but it’s up to you :)”.

Or maybe I’m reading too much into it😉