alt Hacker NewsWhy the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar
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/ði ˈɡloʊbəl iˈliːt (ænd ˈɛvɹiˌwʌn ɛls) ʃʊd swɪtʃ tu fəˈniːmɪk ˈspɛlɪŋ/
Grammar at its best promotes clear communication but more often is used as a social tool of control and exclusion. When you are already talking to people within your in-group, that impulse isn’t necessary.
Looking through the files, I just assumed that they were typing on a tiny keyboard and made typos.
> But in another instance, Epstein was critical of misspelling. A contact forwarded the sex offender his daughter’s college application in 2013. “I wish you had let me review before sending…the grammatical errors and spelling mistakes will make it at least harder for early admission,” Epstein wrote.
It is funny that spelling and grammar matter more when writing to an admissions officer than to a potential business partner. But it’s also funny to imagine a world where you could send in an essay with a bunch of typos and grammar mistakes and expect it not to influence your application.
Spelling and grammar matter in the sense that they are a signal that you know a complicated and somewhat arbitrary set of rules and have agreed to follow them.
I'm just plain cannot visit archive.* sites anymore. Just get a looping captcha.
Most of these people are legitimately stupid. This article is also pretty stupid for focusing on grammar and spelling when the content of these emails is also quite moronic.
I don't think Larry Summers was fired for hanging out with Epstein and talking terribly about women with him; I'm sure plenty of people knew that he was an Epstein-type and hung in Epstein-type circles, and he publicly said horrible things about women's capacities, to people he barely knew.
I think he was fired for sounding like a subnormal reddit dweller. Simply seeming like a mediocre dumb guy. The idea that he was teaching their precious children was simply repellent to Harvard alums. It makes it even more of an obscenity that he was in charge of the government response to the housing bubble, and for running up the stock market in the late 90s. It's so much worse when you confirm the awful acts were done by an actually dumb guy.
You want to fool yourself into thinking that these monsters were trapped by some bad premise within some elaborately reasoned theory or at least unfortunately tripped up by a sign error or a transposed digit buried somewhere. Nope, just a guy whose job is to sit in a chair with a bunch of qualifying paper around his name, and do the things that his backers pay him to do. An elite robosigner. They're not even charming or handsome.
That's just how busy people type. You see it a lot if you communicate with upper managers/Csuite regularly. They don't have anyone to impress in private emails, as long as the message is communicated well enough. Before smartphones/autocorrect/dictation it was worse.
I see this at my $megagorp job. The top brass don't do that much written communication, but when they do they are absolutely shooting from the hip. It's not as bad as Epstein but it's a strong "I've already started reading the next email while I'm typing this one" vibes.
FWIW I don't have a problem with it at all. As the article mentioned there's an aspect of power politics (I'm important enough not to have to worry about formatting). But to me instead of <I wish elites weren't so callous with text> I feel <everyone should feel empowered to write like that> (again, maybe not quite to the level of Epstein, but e.g. capitalisation is just unimportant. Signing off emails with "best wishes" is not a good use of anyone's 500 milliseconds).
My take, after spending years in the prep-school-to-Ivy pipeline: it's not a lack of education, it's a signaling mechanic.
For most of us, grammar is a proxy for competence. We proofread because a mistake could cost us a grade, client, or a job. But the ultra-rich are basically operating post-economically. They aren’t trying to advance; they started rich and they’ll end rich, so they have absolutely no one to impress (and certainly not you).
When you grow up in an environment where friction is historically outsourced—where papers are bought, tutors do the heavy lifting, or SATs are taken by proxies—you never really get held to the same operational standards. You just learn to slop it across the finish line because the consequences for failure are zero.
So who are they trying to impress with their grammar? Nobody. It actually becomes a display of asymmetric leverage. Taking the time to craft a perfect, well-punctuated email screams, "I spent my valuable time optimizing this for you." A typo-ridden, lowercase, one-sentence reply sends the exact opposite message. It establishes a power dynamic where their two seconds of raw attention is the most valuable commodity in the exchange. Following spelling conventions is just middle-class anxiety; sloppiness is the flex. All conventions are for the plebs anyway.
Plus, low-fidelity communication gives them incredible optionality. A garbled, ambiguous text provides perpetual wiggle room. They weren't late or wrong, it was just a typo. It allows them to remain completely non-committal—just another way to maintain high status while shedding any actual accountability.
I think a more likely reason, that for some reason, a lot of people don't want to talk about, is that these "Global Elite" aren't really that smart, creative, or articulate. That they've gotten to where they are despite, not because of their communication skills. They're not being "typical unconventional / quirky entrepreneurs." They're simply C students who knew the right people.
It's a lace-curtain thing to actually spell things properly, actual upstairs people don't give a toss thereabout.
Nothing says “I’m not AI” like a complete disregard for capitalization and grammar. It’s the ultimate authenticity signal in 2026.
This could be read as a condemnation of the text input interfaces we've designed; the users are busy and have little choice. Typing on a phone still is awful:
* Very time-consuming, especially for edits/corrections
* Lacks functionality (where is undo? the right/left arrow keys?) and other functionality is very poor (mouse/pointer control)
* Frustrating!
* Consumes attention: I can type on a full keyboard while looking elsewhere - including talking to someone else, though of course all actions suffer. On full keyboards I can type while reading something, to transcribe it, or I can just watch the output. Or just imagine using keyboard-based commands (e.g., Vim) on a smartphone.
I've tried alternative screen keyboards and they are a bit better, but it still sucks a lot.
nowadays, if you have correct spelling and grammar people accuse you of being an llm.
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It's just that this is how everyone types when typing quickly in a text message on their phone. Not much to see here
to me, the goal of written text is to put an idea or a concept in the mind of another person. _capitalization_ is one of those "arbitrary rules" that add absolutely nothing to this process unless you're using an obscure acronym. in my mind, it's one of those ancient rules that are completely obsolete in the modern world. its only purpose is to allow others to say "i am better than you because i use this ancient rule that someone came up with a thousand years ago, so i'm smart and you're dumb".
being a non-native english speaker, removing capitalization from my writing removed a ton of anxiety when writing text and didn't change at all the landing of my messages or my ideas.
British aristocracy has been pronouncing their own surnames wrong for centuries on purpose. Cholmondeley is "Chumley" Featherstonehaugh is "Fanshaw." If you read it phonetically you mark yourself as an outsider. The misstake is the membership card. (Heck, even in Portland we locals hear about misprouncing Couch St probably every year in local press as some bar for membership to our own locals only vibe.)