lEGALIZE IT

By now everyone and their mother—and their grandmother—has seen the YouTube viral video sensation "Grandmas Smoking Weed for the First Time," in which three adorable grandmas try marijuana in the state of Washington, where recreational cannabis use is now legal. In a memorable moment of the experiment, one of the giggly ganja grandmas tries to explain that she isn't stoned yet, carefully stating "I DON'T FEEl TO ME AS HIGH AS THEY LOOK TO ME." As with all good things on the Internet, the comment soon became a meme, and the accompanying graphic is currently being dissected on Reddit.

Interestingly, at the time of this post, the top Reddit comment notes "The 'L' seems off." Further down the thread, another Reddit contributor "Hemmerly" chimes in, "Only non capital letter. Driving me nuts."

Hemmerly, I KNOW THAT FEEL BRO. I devoted an entire blog to that feel bro.

Reddit user Nickleeee explains, "It's a capital I, rather than a lowercase L."

Realizing the mind-blowing and possibly detrimental effect that the lowercase L can have on a stoned individual, Reddit user ItsNotWhereItWas finally proclaims "Fixed it," replacing the lowercase l with a capital L, and not a moment too soon.

Now, I have some questions for the Reddit community, in case they stumble upon this post.

First, was the creator of the original advice animal meme high when he wrote the text?

Also, as far as I know, some meme generators will not allow you to write with lowercase letters, so the author may have either intentionally or mistakenly used an uppercase i. Was this intentional or accidental?

And, if it was intentional, was it meant to bend the minds of the stoned? If it was accidental, was the error noticed before posting as-is to Reddit? If so, why? Or was the error only noticed after being pointed out by the Reddit community? And if that's the case, WHY?

KElSI'S HOUSE

Lowercase L champions Jeremy Davis and Gary Chapman share credit for reporting this breakup letter that went viral a few months ago.  While I maintain the belief that every one of these snarky viral letters is a fake, the lowercase L AT KElSE'S HOUSE is real.  So, "Honey," you are better off without her.

AS I lAY DYING

James Franco is popping up everywhere in the media. Apparently he was in ten movies in 2013 that I never heard of, plus a guest appearance on two episodes of The Mindy Project and a recent interview on The Howard Stern Show.  And now, as Joe Clark points out, he's making his #lowercaseL debut via Twitter and Instagram!  I suppose I'm looking forward to checking out "Logan marshal green in AS I lAY DYING!" on October 11, as Franco suggests with a tweet, especially since I liked Marshall-Green as Charlie Holloway in Prometheus.  I'm also looking forward to Franco issuing a public apology and explanation for how the HEll he managed to switch off CAPS-LOCK on his iPhone mid-Tweet.  Now I'm skeptical about the release date, too—he may have actually meant October LL,  Roman numerals for 50+50, or October 100, which is not for a while.

BAlANCED DiET

Fellow ROI (that's Roi, not R-Zero-lowercase L) Community member Shai Davis pointed out these unbalanced words of wisdom on the popular 9GAG photo blog.  Does this count as a true example of lowercase L, Shai asks, even though the sentence contains only lowercase L's and lowercase i's, besides the other uppercase letters?  YES! Especially since those lowercase L's are in different words than the lowercase i's.

While it may be true that A BAlANCED DiET iS A GlASS OF WiNE iN EACH HAND, our disturbed scribe at (I think) Café ONS should also note that a balanced sentence contains appropriately capitalized L's and i's, especially when used in the context of all uppercase letters.  Perhaps our bibulous scribbler already had a glass of wine in each hand while writing this sign.

I think collaboration earns Shai an ROI Micro Grant!

WORlD Whistleblower

Some may consider Edward Snowden a hero, but whistleblower Adam Wells, known for his convincing digital image manipulation, is the real hero for coming forward and reporting this lowercase L Instagram. Apparently, the WORlD CAN'T Wait.org for Truth ... about poorly constructed URLs.  Besides being another WORlD issue, this URL also contains an apostrophized CAN'T, when, technically, a URL cannot.

ClOSED CAPTIONING

Jacky explains:

Tonight while watching the most recent episode of Smash ("The Tonys") on IMDb through Hulu, I spotted the strangest lowercase L. I have some hearing problems so I watch most shows with closed captioning, and there it was my first lowercase L, in the abbreviation for Los Angeles (or l.A.).

My guess is that some intern is typing these captions in real time, hit that shift key a split second too late. Or he's actually heading to Iowa.

FAllEN PRiNCESS

Brendan M. forwarded this provocative Flickr photo, a depiction of cocaine on a mirror, ready to be snorted by a FAllEN PRiNCESS through a rolled up bill.  While the coke is apparently just a little Sweet 'n Low, the double lowercase L's in FAllEN have soured my appreciation for this particular artwork.  But if the uppercase extension of the L's were intentional—perhaps as was part of a formerly uppercase i in PRiNCESS—in a monogrammatic tribute to the artist's muse, Lindsay Lohan, I'd say that was pretty creative.

BlUSH

Dave found this on PostSecret.com.  The author claims, "I BlUSH very easily. It makes me feel so ASHAMED." We know something else that should make him feel ashamed.

BEAUTIFUl PEOPlE

Marilyn Manson would be proud of this young man, found by MacMan, rallying THE BEAUTIFUl PEOPlE to action on Facebook.  His first lowercase L seems to be a result of poor planning.  But the second lowercase L in PEOPlE is just inexcusable, unless the kid was just trying to be consistent, in which case there is, at least, some method to the madness.  Incidentally, his skin condition is known as VITIlIGO.

ASK NICElY

Michael sets up the video:

This classic lowercase l is featured in episode 4 of Yacht Rock, the hilarious series of clips about late '70s/early '80s soft rock. Toto keyboardist Steve Porcaro is explaining to the rest of the band how they're going to get Michael McDonald to sing on their song "Rosanna." They didn't succeed. Possibly because of this lowercase l.

ASK NICElY, and you can watch the video and see for yourself:

5 Years of BlOGGING

Breaking my own #1 rule about submitting lowercase L's, I decided to celebrate 5 years of blogging by fabricating my own Bar-B-Q Sign.  It was necessary to force the L's into lowercase by substituting them intentionally with uppercase i's.  I guess whoever wrote this clever little application wasn't aware that most readerboard letter distributors never ship more than one uppercase L.

HOMElESS Man Under Pressure

Click image to see larger ... it HElPS!

Have you seen this video of a homeless dude using two Kermit the Frog puppets to lip sync "Under Pressure" by Queen and David Bowie?  It's currently the #9 viral video on the charts.  I like it, though I suspect a lowercase L error in the ANYTHING HElPS text at the bottom of his sign.  It's hard to tell if it's a lowercase L or a poor excuse for an uppercase L.  Watch through the video and decide for yourself:

Hand-Drawn BlOCK lETTERS

Yitz Complicated shares this apropos trailer with lowercase L readers, figuring we like this kind of stuff.

Will We Ever lEARN?

Abigail G. was confused by this preposterous Post-It note on the National Civic Summit website ... and rightfully so! At first she thought the L in lEARN, CONNECT, ENGAGE was a misplaced exclamation mark to emphasize the word EARN. This lowercase L is worth more investigation. As Abigail pointed out, there was clearly room for an uppercase L, so lack of real estate was not the issue. I may have to follow up with the webmaster for this site, so if you come back to NationalCivicSummit.com years from now and the problem has been fixed, you'll know they lEARNED their lesson.

Office 2010

"Intelligence has confirmed a hacker has released a rogue font on the Internet ... We need to identify this threat and eliminate it."

I wonder if this rogue font is all uppercase letters ... except for the L?

"All the world's fonts are at stake ... Double-space, widen the margins, increase the font size!"

Real lIVE Mermaid

Paul A. found this fishy ad for Real lIVE Mermaid swimming appearances AND entertainment! Looks like a case of delayed caps lock, which may be true of all ONlINE examples. At the time of writing this post — embarrassingly, more than six months after receiving Paul's wonderful tip — the website still boasts the lowercase L, so check it out lIVE. I wonder how long it will last now that the jig is up?

If you live in New York, don't forget about the Mermaid Parade on Coney Island, June 20, 2009.

WORlD of Warcraft

This may be one of the nerdiest examples of a misused lowercase L I've seen to date ... and that's coming from a guy who runs a blog about lowercase L's improperly used amidst all uppercase letters. Found by Eric R., he writes:

Okay, I realize this isn't an actual SIGN, but I thought it was funny when playing World of Warcraft that someone in dire need of assistance took the time to caps every letter, save the "L" (and the same day I had first come across your site, no less)

You're wrong about one thing, Eric. This is a sign. A sign of terrible things to come. God HElP us all.

I'll DEBATE

Christian C. found this report for the 2008 presidential debate on the front page of the Huffington Post today. It's not confusing to read, but certainly an interesting editorial choice to only make the L's lowercase in "I'll", while all the other letters in the headline, including the typically lowercase first "c" in McCain, are uppercase. They may have been trying to save some space, considering there is no space between the ellipsis and BRING UP.

MlS-leading

My brother-in-law Todd got in on the lowercase L action when he found this MlS-leading Multiple Listing Service website. Webmaster Alex Zapata got it right in the first MLS heading, and all the other MLS mentions throughout. But the L in the final "Find your desired property through the MlS" is just bad placement, and we all know the three most important things in real estate, right? lOCATION, lOCATION, and lOCATION.

So long, SCRABUlOUS

Yesterday, Facebook finally shut down the unauthorized but highly popular SCRABBLE clone, Scrabulous. The new EA Scrabble Beta on Facebook is very flashy, but I'll miss the simple and raw interface of the Scrabulous game. It had its quirks, like Kasey points out in her endgame:

I'm sitting here at work right now playing Scrabulous (kinda like Scrabble only different rules) on Facebook when I noticed a lowercase L!!! If you notice on the right the Last Move is showing as 'CABlE' and when you look at the game board, the red L is where the correct word is.