Today’s emails that have come our way via the always interesting and blogworthy posts to the Park Slope Parents list makes for perfect Memorial Day Weekend reading: are Park Slopers abandoning the use of upper case letters in their emails? Is it too complicated to hit the shift key at the same time as a letter? Here’s the email that was brought to our attention:

Is it ok if I just ask, what’s behind the abandonment of upper case letters these days? I know it’s gone on for a while, and I find myself circling around it and wondering a few things: Is it because everyone is in such a hurry that it’s easier just to let it go? I’m usually in a hurry but it doesn’t take much energy to push the shift key, except when I’m texting.

Is it a true or fake kind of humility (“just little ‘ol me here”)? Or does it mean that people who don’t use upper case don’t want to give greater importance to names, cities or places (a kind of pseudo-egalitarianism) Is it a fad like certain tatoos are to some Gen X’ers? Are people conformist to do it or not to do it? Is it saying or doing anything new? As you can see, I tend to preserve the convention, but sometimes in empathy for the person who writes me, i drop it all so i can feel closer to whoever wrote me in that style… Sometimes i even flip back and forth out of confusion. Does anyone have any big insights into this trend, or am i just reading too much into it?

One of the emails so far coins a new (to us) phrase: NAK, or more accurately, nak, as it was written in lower case. It means: Nursing at Keyboard. Specifically: ” i also am sometimes “nak” (nursing at keyboard) or simply juggling children and therefore typing w one hand, but the all-lowercase has become the norm for my regular typing so i can’t use that as my excuse.