from http://www.law.berkeley.edu/1147.htm

A. Purpose

Your cover letter is as important as your resumebecause it is often read first and plays a vital role in your quest foran interview. A cover letter is not a transmittal letter, andyou may be surprised at how time-consuming it is to craft a good one. Acover letter has a purpose, which is to let an employer know why theyshould bother reading your resume and why they should meet you. It alsoserves as an example of your written work product; thus it should beclear, brief, and written in a business letter style, without anytypographical errors.

B. Types

1. Cover letters for unsolicited applications come in three main types:

• Personal Letter. These are the most effectivecover letters and are sent to people you have met or with whom you havea mutual acquaintance. These letters should all start with thesentence: “_______ recommended that I contact you.” As this type ofletter is most likely to get a response, if you have any possibility ofestablishing this sort of connection to a prospective employer inadvance of sending your letter, you should try your best to do so.
  
• Targeted Letters. Next best thing. Targetedletters are based on research of the employer, and are individuallytailored. Your letter should incorporate the information learnedthrough your research to show the employer that you have skills theywill be able to put to use.
  
• Mass Mailers. Least desirable. These are genericexcept for the name and address of the employer, and have a very lowsuccess rate of getting interviews.

2. When you respond to a job listing, you will usually be requestedto submit a cover letter as part of your application. In this case, usethe job description and requested qualifications as a guide. While notslavishly following the language of the listing, your letter shoulddemonstrate that you have what the employer is looking for.

3. A few employers at OCI request that students bring a cover letterto the initial interview. This is essentially to require students tothink about why they want to work for this employer, but it makes for aletter which deviates from the usual “please consider me for aninterview” approach. See below for suggestions on OCI cover letters.

Cover letters should follow standard business letter format, as tospacing, salutation, etc. If you are not sure of the fine points,consult a business correspondence reference source. Avoidabbreviations, contractions and shortcuts (such as a slash instead of“or”), although if there is an accepted short form of the name of theorganization you are writing to (e.g., ACLU or Howard Rice) it isacceptable to use it in the text of your letter. Your telephone numberand email address should appear somewhere in the letter, either at thetop with your address, or in the closing paragraph, when you ask themto contact you. Note that your resume is “enclosed,” not “attached”(which means clipped or stapled).

If you are not sure to whom you should send your letter, it isalways acceptable to write to the executive director of a nonprofit, orthe hiring partner or head of recruiting at a firm; they can forwardyour application to the appropriate person within the organization. Ifat all possible, write to an individual by name, not to “Director” or“Recruiting Coordinator.” Firm and organization web sites are veryuseful in finding this information (and for confirming correctspellings and the like); it may be more difficult to find the name ofan individual addressee for government job opportunities. If you do nothave the name of an individual, the salutation should be “Dear Sir orMadam” (not “To Whom It May Concern”). Of course if you are respondingto a job posting, address your letter exactly as instructed.

First Paragraph. Begin your letter with a statementof who you are and why you are writing. Introduce yourself as a lawstudent (including the year you are in) or a graduate of Berkeley Lawand specify what it is you are seeking: a summer job, an associateposition, a clerkship, part-time work during the school year, etc.

The goal of this paragraph is to give the reader a reason to want tofinish reading the letter. If you don't have a personal connection tocite, try to establish a nexus between yourself and the employer, suchas knowledge of their practice, an established commitment to orinterest in their work, a connection to their city, or something elsewhich conveys that you are not just writing to them as part of a massmailing for any job in any location. (If that in fact is what you aredoing, try not to be too obvious about it. An employer wants to thinkthat you sought him or her out purposely rather than randomly.)

Body Paragraph(s). This is thesection in which you "sell" your experience and qualifications to theemployer. Your goal here is to answer the question, “Why should theemployer meet you?”

Call attention to something which substantiates your interest inthis particular employer. It could be coursework in their specialty,the recommendation of a professor in their area of practice,undergraduate residency in their city, or any other indication of yourinterest. Try also to show how your experiences will translate intoskills which will be useful to this particular employer. Highlightrelevant qualifications which are not on your resume, such ascoursework, research, or a prior connection to the organization or theissues they work on. If you have general legal skills such asnegotiation, litigation, client counseling, interviewing, mock trials,etc., you may want to include them. As much as possible, try to conveyunderstanding of, and enthusiasm for, the aims of the organization.

Employers do not expect first-year students to have highly-developedlegal skills to offer. Therefore, for first-year students writing toprivate firms, this section can be a single, short paragraph, unlessyou have a strong background in a relevant area. However, eveninexperienced first-year students writing to public interest/sectororganizations should make an effort to describe skills and intereststhat are relevant to the employer.

It is appropriate and not uncommon for a public interest coverletter to be somewhat more detailed or personal than a private sectorcover letter. Of course, it is still very important to be concise, butit is acceptable for the letter to be a full page if your experiencedictates. In a public interest cover letter, it is important both tohighlight your demonstrated commitment to the mission/work/client baseof the organization through your own relevant work or life experience,and to illustrate your relevant skills. Take another look at yourresume for items that show your interest, commitment and skills. Evenif you do not have experience in the specific area in which anorganization works, it is still important to emphasize yourdemonstrated commitment to the public interest, and to draw connectionsbetween that general commitment and the specific work of theorganization. As it is important not to merely regurgitate your resume,consider including a story that illustrates you are interested orqualified in the position.

If your application raises questions that are readily answered, suchas availability after the Bar exam, judicial clerkship plans, etc., theletter can address those; other issues may be better deferred to theinterview stage. Consult a CDO attorney-counselor if you're not surewhether to include something in your cover letter.

Final Paragraph. In your last paragraph, thank themfor their consideration, and say you hope to hear from them soon. Forout-of-town employers, indicate when you plan to be in their geographicarea and state your availability for an interview. Be sure to includeyour phone number and email in this paragraph unless you use aletterhead style that includes them at the top of the page. If youstate that you will call the employer to follow up on your application,be sure you do so.

If you are bringing a cover letter to an on-campus interview (whichyou should do only if the employer requests you to), the content willbe a bit different. You don't need to introduce yourself, as you willbe there in person, and you won't request an interview at the closing.But you can thank the employer for interviewing you and say that youwelcome the opportunity to learn more about the employer and to discussthe possibility of working for them. The important thing is to show whyyou are interested in this particular employer, and how you think yourbackground makes you a good match for them.

E. Common Cover Letter Mistakes

The mistakes most commonly found in student cover letters are:

• Restating your resume. “I graduated from theUniversity of Oregon in 2005, with a B.A., cum laude, in PoliticalScience, then worked as a substitute teacher in an urban high schoolbefore starting law school in the fall of 2008.” Don't waste spacewith facts that are readily gleaned from your resume! Instead, youcould say (briefly) how your work experience led you to pursue a legalcareer in an area practiced by the employer.
  
• Focusing on what you stand to gain from the job. “Iam particularly interested in your firm's excellent training programfor summer associates, and in gaining exposure to a variety ofdifferent practice areas.” Remember, employers only grantinterviews to candidates who offer something of potential use to theemployer. Try to say how your skills and enthusiasm will help theemployer serve its clients, or otherwise further its aims.
  
• Being too informal or familiar. “I'm thrilledby the possibility of working with you this summer, and would love tomeet with you in person/by phone to chat about what the options mightbe.” Enthusiasm is good, but it must be presented professionally.

Other cover letter mistakes include: being defensive or apologetic;appearing arrogant or entitled, and being too long and wordy.Unsupported statements of your qualities (“I am highly motivated and aquick study”) do not help your case. Generic reasons for your interestin the employer (e.g., its “excellent reputation”) tend to demonstrateyour lack of specific knowledge. Of course typos and inaccuracies, suchas misspelled names, or (please!) stating an interest in a practicearea that the firm doesn't have, are automatic application-killers.

The sample cover letters at the end of this guide are suggestionsonly; please do not feel excessively constrained by their approach.Your letter should, of course, be original work that reflects yourunique background and the job you are aiming at.

Sample Cover Letters

-your street address-
-city, state zip code-

-date

Office of the Attorney General
California Department of Justice
Recruitment and Retention Unit
1300 I Street, Suite 720
Sacramento, CA 95814
Via email: careers@doj.ca.gov

Dear Sir or Madam:

I am a first-year law student at the University of California,Berkeley, School of Law (“Berkeley Law”), and am writing to apply forthe 2009 Public Rights Division Summer Honors Program. As I intend tobegin my legal career in the Bay Area after graduation, my topplacement preference is the San Francisco office (in the area ofconsumer law and false claims) followed by the Oakland office (in thearea of civil rights enforcement).

My academic, personal and professional experience has solidified mycommitment to public service and, in particular, to the vital missionof the Public Rights Division. I would appreciate the opportunity tocontribute to that mission, while learning from the experiencedgovernment attorneys within the section.

While an undergraduate at Boston College, I had the opportunity toserve as an intern at Greater Boston Legal Services. This experienceexposed me to a diverse set of legal issues ranging from employmentdiscrimination to fair housing legislation and provided me with theopportunity to witness the critical role that attorneys play inensuring justice for all parties in need of representation. Throughparticipating in client intake and supporting the attorneys atadministrative hearings, I was able to develop basic fact-finding andinvestigation skills. Most importantly, this internship furthered mydesire to dedicate my legal career to addressing the systematicbarriers preventing millions of Americans from accessing legalprotections and remedies.

Since arriving at Berkeley Law, I have continued to develop myresearch and writing skills through my participation in the BerkeleyJournal of Employment and Labor Law and during the standard course oflegal writing, which required the drafting of three legal memoranda.

My resume and writing sample are enclosed as separate attachments. Iwould welcome the opportunity to discuss with you further myqualifications for summer employment and can be reached at (510)555-5555 or at lawstudent@law.berkeley.edu. Thank you for your time andconsideration.

Very truly yours,

-your signature-
-your name typed-

Enclosures

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-your street address-
-city, state zip code-

-date -

Zachary Jones, Esq.
Jones, Brown & Smythe
-street address-
-city, state zip code-

Dear Mr. Jones:

I am a first-year student at the University of California, Berkeley,School of Law, and I am interested in employment with Jones, Brown andSmythe next summer. A copy of my resume is enclosed.

While it is early in my legal career, I have learned a great deal inmy studies to date, including practical research, analysis and writingskills, which I am eager to put to use on behalf of you and yourclients. My prior work experience, primarily in student services whileattending college, has given me a strong sense of client service.

I would welcome the opportunity to interview with your firm; pleasefeel free to contact me at (510) 123-4567, or myname@law.berkeley.edu.I appreciate your time and consideration, and I look forward to hearingfrom you soon.

Sincerely yours,

-your signature-
-your name typed-

Enclosure

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-your street address-
-city, state zip code-

-date-

The Children's Law Center Attn: Law Clerk/Intern Hiring 616 H Street, NW , Suite 300
Washington, DC 20001

Dear Sir or Madam:

I am a first-year law student at the University of California,Berkeley, School of Law ("Berkeley Law"). I am writing to apply for asummer internship with the Children's Law Center. I have extensiveexperience working with youth facing difficult circumstances, and hopeto continue this work at the Children's Law Center.

I have a long-standing commitment to working for children and youth.During college, I provided literacy tutoring to elementary schoolstudents. I also served as a youth mentor for high school students.Both of these roles required me to develop rapport with children whowere facing severe challenges at school and in their home lives. I cameto appreciate how important it is for children to have people who arededicated to supporting and advocating for their well-being. It is mycommitment to youth advocacy that influenced my decision to attend lawschool.

Since beginning law school, I have sought out opportunities tocontinue my work with young people, while developing legal skills thatI will need to be an effective youth advocate. As a volunteer with theExpulsion Prevention Project, a student-run pro bono project ofBerkeley Law's Youth and Education Law Society, I work alongsideattorneys to represent high school students at expulsion hearings. Ihave honed my client interviewing skills, building rapport quickly withhigh school students facing expulsion. I have gained critical advocacyexperience through preparing and successfully presenting my client'scase at hearing. In drafting an expulsion hearing brief, I was able toeffective apply the lessons of my first-year legal research and writingcourse to benefit my client. I hope to continue my development as achild and youth advocate through an internship with the Children's LawCenter.

I have attached a copy of my resume. I would welcome an opportunityto meet with you to discuss my interests and qualifications in person,and will be in Washington, D.C. during the week of January 15, 2008. Ican be reached by phone at (510) 555-5555. Thank you for yourconsideration.

Sincerely,

-your signature-
-your name typed-

Enclosure

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-your street address-
-city, state zip code- 

-date-

Jane Smith, Esq.
Blank, Blank, & Blank
-street address-
-city, state zip code-

Dear Ms. Smith:

I am writing to express my interest in employment with your firmnext summer. I am currently in my first year as a student at theUniversity of California, Berkeley, School of Law.

I am particularly interested in areas of the law that might drawupon my expertise in economics. As my enclosed resume indicates, I amcurrently pursuing a joint degree in economics at the PhD level, withspecializations in finance and labor economics. My training at the M.A.level was in the area of money and banking. The field of economics hasafforded me a substantive and analytical foundation which I intend toput to use as a practicing attorney. I am confident that my backgroundin economics, together with my legal training, could be an asset toBlank, Blank and Blank's labor or corporate finance department.

I would very much appreciate the opportunity to discuss my candidacywith you. I can be reached by telephone at (510) 123-4567, or email atmyname@law.berkeley.edu. Thank you for considering my application.

Sincerely,

-your signature-
-your name typed-

Enclosure

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-your street address-
-city, state zip code-

-date-

Susan R. Smith
Global Recruiting Manager
Blank, Blank & Blank
-street address-
-city, state zip code-

Dear Ms. Smith:

I am a second-year student at the University of California,Berkeley, School of Law ("Berkeley Law") and I am seeking a summerassociate position with your firm. While I elected to pursue myeducation in California, I look forward to returning to the East coastafter graduation, particularly to New York City where I was raised.Blank, Blank and Blank's New York base and mix of practice areas,especially its employment litigation specialty, make it particularlyattractive to me.

As my enclosed resume indicates, I am familiar with law firmsettings through my part-time work in private firms while I was anundergraduate. In my three semesters at Berkeley Law to date, I havegained solid experience in legal research and writing, and a strongfoundation in legal concepts and analysis, including coursework inemployment law. At my job last summer with the EEOC in San Jose, whereI worked with attorneys litigating civil rights violations in theemployment arena, I honed my practical legal skills, as well asdeveloping my understanding of employment law. I am eager to return tothe private sector and put my skills and training to use on behalf ofyour clients.

I will be in New York from December 26th to January 11th, and wouldwelcome the opportunity to speak to you or others at your firm about asummer associate position. If you are able to schedule me for aninterview during that period, please contact me via my cell phone,(510) 987-6543, or email, myname@berkeley.edu. Thank you very much foryour time and consideration.

Sincerely,

-your signature-
-your name typed-

Enclosure

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-your street address-
-city, state zip code- 

-date-

Corey Lewis
HR & Intern Administrator
Environmental Defense Fund
257 Park Avenue South, 17th Floor
New York NY 10010

Dear Mr. Lewis:

As a second year law student at University of California, Berkeley,School of Law ("Berkeley Law"), I am writing to apply for a summer lawclerk position with Environmental Defense Fund's New York Office.Environmental Defense Fund's interdisciplinary approach toenvironmental protection is especially exciting to me, and I believe myown background in both environmental law and science makes me a goodfit for EDF's internship program.

I have long been committed to environmental protection. As anEnvironmental Science major in college, I gained a solid foundation inphysical and biological sciences as they relate to the environment. Butit was my community outreach work with Environment California,educating members of the public about legislative efforts to fightglobal warming, that made me realize that I wanted to go to law schoolto learn to use law as a tool for environmental protection.

Since beginning at Berkeley Law, I have gained significantexperience in environmental law and litigation. Through my courseworkin the Environmental Certificate Program, including Environmental Lawand Policy, Public Lands Law, Environmental Pollution, and WaterResources Law, I have developed an understanding of the issues, lawsand regulations, and stakeholders that shape legal environmentaladvocacy. As a summer intern at Earthjustice, I had the opportunity toperform legal research and writing on diverse issues, includingdeforestation, wildlife and wetlands protection, water pollution, andclimate change. I worked extensively on an active lawsuit under theNational Forest Management Act, drafting significant portions of atrial brief, joining in strategy sessions, and meeting with scientistsand experts. Next semester, I will continue developing my environmentallitigation skills through an internship with the U.S. Department ofJustice, Environment and Natural Resource Division.

I believe my experience and commitment to environmental protectionwould allow me to make a substantial contribution to the work of EDF. Ihave enclosed my resume, and would be happy to provide additionalmaterials; please feel free to contact me at (510) 999-9999 ormyname@berkeley.edu Thank you in advance for your time; I look forwardto speaking with you soon.

Yours truly,

-your signature-
-your name typed-

Enclosure

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-your street address-
-city, state zip code-

-date-

Samantha Smith
U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission
San Francisco District Office
350 The Embarcadero, Suite 500
San Francisco, CA 94105-1260

Dear Ms. Smith:

As a second-year law student at the University of California,Berkeley, School of Law ("Berkeley Law"), I am writing to apply for asummer internship at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission(EEOC). I had the opportunity recently to meet with EEOC attorney JaneDoe and, after learning more about your office's work, am enthusiasticabout the opportunity to spend my second summer contributing to theEEOC's mission.

Working at the EEOC would be an invaluable opportunity to apply myexperience working on employment discrimination and HIV/AIDS issues ina litigation context. At the San Francisco Human Rights Commission(SFHRC), I handled discrimination complaints, including mediation of anemployment discrimination complaint for which I drafted a settlementagreement. My work at the SFHRC strengthened my understanding of howcity government and regulatory agencies can work to advance civilrights and affirmed my desire to focus my career on fightingdiscrimination. Having worked at an agency whose authority was limitedto investigation and mediation of discrimination complaints, I am eagerto experience the ways that having the authority to litigate affectsthe mediation and resolution of a complaint.

In addition, I have a background in direct service and advocacy. Asa paralegal at the Whitman-Walker Clinic in Washington, D.C., Isupported attorneys providing direct legal services to low-incomeindividuals living with HIV and AIDS. This experience exposed me to arange of critical legal issues facing my clients; in particular, Iworked with a number of clients alleging employment discrimination onthe basis of their HIV status.

I believe these experiences would allow me to make a strongcontribution at the EEOC, while building on a new set of advocacyskills in the area of litigation. Enclosed please find a writing sampleand a resume. I would welcome the opportunity to discuss with you myqualifications for summer employment and can be reached at (510)555-5555 or at lawstudent@law.berkeley.edu. Thank you for your time andconsideration.

Sincerely,

-your signature-
-your name typed-

Enclosures

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-your street address-
-city, state zip code-

-date-

Y.A. Tuttle, Esq.
Tuttle and Gehrig
-street address-
-city, state zip code-

Dear Ms. Tuttle:

I am a second-year student at the University of California,Berkeley, School of Law ("Berkeley Law"), and responding to yourlisting in the b-Line for a part-time law clerk position. A copy of myresume is enclosed.

I was pleased to see your posting seeking a law student who isinterested in assisting an attorney in a small criminal defensepractice. I came to law school hoping to pursue a career serving peoplewho have been accused of committing crimes. This desire was confirmedby my positive experience in my criminal law course here at BerkeleyLaw, and by my work last summer with the Alameda County PublicDefender, where I also acquired real-world experience of the procedureand practice of criminal defense work. Research and writing are, Ibelieve, among my strong skills, and I would welcome the opportunityboth to develop them and put them to use on behalf of you and yourclients.

Thank you for considering me for this position. I hope to have theopportunity to discuss my candidacy with you. I can be reached at (510)123-4567, or myname@berkeley.edu.

Very truly yours,

-your signature-
-your name typed-

Enclosure

It’s snowing heavily, and everyone in the backyardis in a swimsuit, at some kind of party: Mom, Dad, the high schoolprincipal, there’s even an ex-girlfriend. And is that Elvis, over bythe piñata?

Lou Beach

Uh-oh.

Dreamsare so rich and have such an authentic feeling that scientists havelong assumed they must have a crucial psychological purpose. To Freud,dreaming provided a playground for the unconscious mind; to Jung, itwas a stage where the psyche’s archetypes acted out primal themes.Newer theories hold that dreams help the brain to consolidate emotionalmemories or to work though current problems, like divorce and workfrustrations.

Yet what if the primary purpose of dreaming isn’t psychological at all?

In a paperpublished last month in the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Dr. J.Allan Hobson, a psychiatrist and longtime sleep researcher at Harvard,argues that the main function of rapid-eye-movement sleep, or REM, whenmost dreaming occurs, is physiological. The brain is warming itscircuits, anticipating the sights and sounds and emotions of waking.

“Ithelps explain a lot of things, like why people forget so many dreams,”Dr. Hobson said in an interview. “It’s like jogging; the body doesn’tremember every step, but it knows it has exercised. It has been tunedup. It’s the same idea here: dreams are tuning the mind for consciousawareness.”

Drawing on work of his own and others, Dr. Hobsonargues that dreaming is a parallel state of consciousness that iscontinually running but normally suppressed during waking. The idea isa prominent example of how neuroscience is altering assumptions abouteveryday (or every-night) brain functions.

“Most people who havestudied dreams start out with some predetermined psychological ideasand try to make dreaming fit those,” said Dr. Mark Mahowald, aneurologist who is director of the sleep disordersprogram at Hennepin County Medical Center, in Minneapolis. “What I likeabout this new paper is that he doesn’t make any assumptions about whatdreaming is doing.”

The paper has already stirred controversy anddiscussion among Freudians, therapists and other researchers, includingneuroscientists. Dr. Rodolfo Llinás, a neurologist and physiologist at New York University, called Dr. Hobson’s reasoning impressive but said it was not the only physiological interpretation of dreams.

“Iargue that dreaming is not a parallel state but that it isconsciousness itself, in the absence of input from the senses,” saidDr. Llinás, who makes the case in the book “I of the Vortex: FromNeurons to Self” (M.I.T.,2001). Once people are awake, he argued, their brain essentiallyrevises its dream images to match what it sees, hears and feels — thedreams are “corrected” by the senses.

These novel ideas aboutdreaming are based partly on basic findings about REM sleep. Inevolutionary terms, REM appears to be a recent development; it isdetectable in humans and other warm-blooded mammals and birds. Andstudies suggest that REM makes its appearance very early in life — inthe third trimester for humans, well before a developing child hasexperience or imagery to fill out a dream.

In studies,scientists have found evidence that REM activity helps the brain buildneural connections, particularly in its visual areas. The developingfetus may be “seeing” something, in terms of brain activity, longbefore the eyes ever open — the developing brain drawing on innate,biological models of space and time, like an internal virtual-realitymachine. Full-on dreams, in the usual sense of the word, come muchlater. Their content, in this view, is a kind of crude test run forwhat the coming day may hold.

None of this is to say thatdreams are devoid of meaning. Anyone who can remember a vivid dreamknows that at times the strange nighttime scenes reflect real hopes andanxieties: the young teacher who finds himself naked at the lectern;the new mother in front of an empty crib, frantic in her imagined loss.

But people can read almost anything into the dreams that theyremember, and they do exactly that. In a recent study of more than1,000 people, researchers at Carnegie Mellon Universityand Harvard found strong biases in the interpretations of dreams. Forinstance, the participants tended to attach more significance to anegative dream if it was about someone they disliked, and more to apositive dream if it was about a friend.

In fact, researchsuggests that only about 20 percent of dreams contain people or placesthat the dreamer has encountered. Most images appear to be unique to asingle dream.

Scientists know this because some people have theability to watch their own dreams as observers, without waking up. Thisstate of consciousness, called lucid dreaming, is itself something amystery — and a staple of New Age and ancient mystics. But it is a realphenomenon, one in which Dr. Hobson finds strong support for hisargument for dreams as a physiological warm-up before waking.

Indozens of studies, researchers have brought people into the laboratoryand trained them to dream lucidly. They do this with a variety oftechniques, including auto-suggestion as head meets pillow (“I will beaware when I dream; I will observe”) and teaching telltale signs ofdreaming (the light switches don’t work; levitation is possible; it isoften impossible to scream).

Lucid dreaming occurs during amixed state of consciousness, sleep researchers say — a heavy dose ofREM with a sprinkling of waking awareness. “This is just one kind ofmixed state, but there are whole variety of them,” Dr. Mahowald said. Sleepwalking and night terrors, he said, represent mixtures of muscle activation and non-REM sleep. Attacks of narcolepsy reflect an infringement of REM on normal daytime alertness.

In study published in September in the journal Sleep, Ursula Voss of J. W. Goethe-Universityin Frankfurt led a team that analyzed brain waves during REM sleep,waking and lucid dreaming. It found that lucid dreaming had elements ofREM and of waking — most notably in the frontal areas of the brain,which are quiet during normal dreaming. Dr. Hobson was a co-author onthe paper.

“You are seeing this split brain in action,” he said.“This tells me that there are these two systems, and that in fact theycan be running at the same time.”

Researchers have a way to gobefore they can confirm or fill out this working hypothesis. But thepayoffs could extend beyond a deeper understanding of the sleepingbrain. People who struggle with schizophreniasuffer delusions of unknown origin. Dr. Hobson suggests that theseflights of imagination may be related to an abnormal activation of adreaming consciousness. “Let the dreamer awake, and you will see psychosis,” Jung said.

Foreveryone else, the idea of dreams as a kind of sound check for thebrain may bring some comfort, as well. That ominous dream of peoplegathered on the lawn for some strange party? Probably meaningless.

Noisy sex woman loses appeal bid

A recording of the Cartwrights having sex was played in court

A woman who was banned from making loud noises during sex has lost an appeal against her conviction.

Caroline and Steve Cartwright's love-making was described as "murder" and "unnatural" at Newcastle Crown Court.

Neighbours, the local postman and a woman taking her child to school complained about the noise.

Mrs Cartwright, 48, from Washington on Wearside, lost the appeal against a conviction for breaching a noise abatement notice.

She argued she had a right to "respect for her private and family life" under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act.

Weare in no doubt whatsoever about the level of noise that can be heardin neighbouring properties, in the street and in the back lane. Recorder Jeremy Freedman, Newcastle Crown Court

But Recorder Jeremy Freedman, sitting with two magistrates, rejectedher claim that she could not help making the loud noise during sex.

Hesaid: "We are in no doubt whatsoever about the level of noise that canbe heard in neighbouring properties, in the street and in the backlane.

"It certainly was intrusive and constituted a statutorynuisance. It was clearly of a very disturbing nature and it was alsocompounded by the duration - this was not a one-off, it went on forhours at a time.

"It is further compounded by the frequency of the episode, virtually every night."

'Shouting and screaming'

Nextdoor neighbour Rachel O'Connor told the court she was frequently latefor work because she overslept having been awake most of the nightbecause of the noise.

She said: "The noise sounds like they areboth in considerable pain. I cannot describe the noise. I have neverever heard anything like it."

The court heard Sunderland City Council recorded levels of up 47 decibels.

MrsCartwright was appealing against the abatement notice, which wasimposed in November 2007, and a subsequent Asbo, banning the couplefrom "shouting, screaming or vocalisation at such a level as to be astatutory nuisance".

She has since been accused of three countsof breaching the Asbo, but has denied the charges and will stand trialat Newcastle Crown Court on 14 December.

DIFFERENT Kim Eun Mi Young in an undated photo withher brothers, David, left, and Shawn. Growing up, she says, “at no timedid I consider myself anything other than white.”

Related

J. Michael Short for The New York Times

Kim Eun Mi Young in her San Antonio home with family photographs and mementos.

J. Michael Short for The New York Times

Ms. Young's visa and items that came with her from South Korea when she was adopted in 1961.

When her father brought home toys, a record and a picture book on South Korea, the country from which she was adopted in 1961, she ignored them.

Growingup in Georgia, Kansas and Hawaii, in a military family, she would dateonly white teenagers, even when Asian boys were around.

“At notime did I consider myself anything other than white,” said Ms. Young,48, who lives in San Antonio. “I had no sense of any identity as aKorean woman. Dating an Asian man would have forced me to accept who Iwas.”

It was not until she was in her 30s that she began toexplore her Korean heritage. One night, after going out to celebratewith her husband at the time, she says she broke down and began cryinguncontrollably.

“I remember sitting there thinking, where is mymother? Why did she leave me? Why couldn’t she struggle to keep me?”she said. “That was the beginning of my journey to find out who I am.”

Theexperiences of Ms. Young are common among adopted children from Korea,according to one of the largest studies of transracial adoptions, whichis to be released on Monday. The report, which focuses on the firstgeneration of children adopted from South Korea, found that 78 percentof those who responded had considered themselves to be white or hadwanted to be white when they were children. Sixty percent indicatedtheir racial identity had become important by the time they were inmiddle school, and, as adults, nearly 61 percent said they had traveledto Korea both to learn more about the culture and to find their birthparents.

Like Ms. Young, most Korean adoptees were raised inpredominantly white neighborhoods and saw few, if any, people wholooked like them. The report also found that the children were teasedand experienced racial discrimination, often from teachers. And only aminority of the respondents said they felt welcomed by members of theirown ethnic group.

As a result, many of them have had trouble coming to terms with their racial and ethnic identities.

The report was issued by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute,a nonprofit adoption research and policy group based in New York. Since1953, parents in the United States have adopted more than ahalf-million children from other countries, the vast majority of themfrom orphanages in Asia, South America and, most recently, Africa. Yetthe impact of such adoptions on identity has been only sporadicallystudied. The authors of the Donaldson Adoption Institute study saidthey hoped their work would guide policymakers, parents and adoptionagencies in helping the current generation of children adopted fromAsian countries to form healthy identities.

“So much of theresearch on transracial adoption has been done from the perspective ofadoptive parents or adolescent children,” said Adam Pertman,executive director of the institute. “We wanted to be able to draw onthe knowledge and life experience of a group of individuals who canprovide insight into what we need to do better.”

The studyrecommends several changes in adoption practices that the institutesaid are important, including better support for adoptive parents andrecognition that adoption grows in significance for their children fromyoung adulthood on, and throughout adulthood.

South Korea wasthe first country from which Americans adopted in significant numbers.From 1953 to 2007, an estimated 160,000 South Korean children wereadopted by people from other countries, most of them in the UnitedStates. They make up the largest group of transracial adoptees in theUnited States and, by some estimates, are 10 percent of the nation’sKorean population.

The report says that significant changeshave occurred since the first generation of adopted children werebrought to the United States, a time when parents were told toassimilate the children into their families without regard for theirnative culture.

Yet even adoptees who are exposed to theirculture and have parents who discuss issues of race and discriminationsay they found it difficult growing up.

Heidi Weitzman, who wasadopted from Korea when she was 7 months old and who grew up inethnically mixed neighborhoods in St. Paul, said her parents were intouch with other parents with Korean children and even offered to sendher to a “culture camp” where she could learn about her heritage.

“ButI hated it,” said Ms. Weitzman, a mental health therapist in St. Paul.“I didn’t want to do anything that made me stand out as being Korean.Being surrounded by people who were blonds and brunets, I just thoughtthat I was white.” It was not until she moved to New York after collegethat she began to become comfortable with being Korean.

“I was21 before I could look in the mirror and not be surprised by what I sawstaring back at me,” she said. “The process of discovering who I am hasbeen a long process, and I’m still on it.”

Ms. Weitzman’s roadto self-discovery was fairly typical of the 179 Korean adoptees withtwo Caucasian parents who responded to the Donaldson Adoption Institutesurvey. Most said they began to think of themselves more as Korean whenthey attended college or moved to ethnically diverse neighborhoods asadults.

For Joel Ballantyne, a high school teacher in FortLauderdale, Fla., who was adopted by white parents in 1977, the studyconfirms many of the feelings that he and other adoptees have tried toexplain for years.

“This offers proof that we’re not crazy orjust being ungrateful to our adoptive parents when we talk about ourexperiences,” said Mr. Ballantyne, 35, who was adopted at age 3 and whogrew up in Alabama, Texas and, finally, California.

Jennifer Town, 33, agreed.

“Alot of adoptees have problems talking about these issues with theiradoptive families,” she said. “They take it as some kind of rejectionof them when we’re just trying to figure out who we are.”

Ms.Towns, who was adopted in 1979 and raised in a small town in Minnesota,recalled that during college, when she announced that she was going toKorea to find out more about her past, her parents “freaked out.”

“Theysaw it as a rejection,” she said. “My adoptive mother is really intogenealogy, tracing her family to Sweden, and she was upset with mebecause I wanted to find out who I was.”

Mr. Ballantyne said he received a similar reaction when he told his parents of plans to travel to Korea.

TheDonaldson Adoption Institute’s study concludes that such trips areamong the many ways that parents and adoption agencies could helpadoptees deal with their struggle with identity and race. But both Ms.Towns and Mr. Ballantyne said that while traveling to South Korea wasan eye-opening experience in many ways, it was also disheartening.

ManyKoreans, they said, did not consider them to be “real Koreans” becausethey did not speak the language or seem to understand the culture.

Mr.Ballantyne tracked down his maternal grandmother, but when he met her,he said, she scolded him for not learning Korean before he came.

“Shewas the one who had put me up for adoption,” he said. “So that justcreated tension between us. Even as I was leaving, she continued to sayI needed to learn Korean before I came by again.”

Sonya Wilson,adopted in 1976 by a white family in Clarissa, Minn., says thatalthough she shares many of the experiences of those interviewed in thestudy — she grew up as the only Asian in a town of 600 — policy changesmust address why children are put up for adoption, and should do moreto help single women in South Korea keep their children. “This studydoes not address any of these issues,” Ms. Wilson said.

Ms. Young said the study was helpful, but that it came too late to help people like her.

Jean Chung for the International Herald Tribune

Hahm Ji-seon and her friend, Bonogit Hussain, were riding a bus near Seoul when insults were hurled at them.

SEOUL — On the evening of July 10, Bonogit Hussain,a 29-year-old Indian man, and Hahn Ji-seon, a female Korean friend,were riding a bus near Seoul when a man in the back began hurlingracial and sexist slurs at them.

The situation would be afamiliar one to many Korean women who have dated or even — as in Ms.Hahn’s case — simply traveled in the company of a foreign man.

What was different this time, however, was that, once it was reportedin the South Korean media, prosecutors sprang into action, charging theman they have identified only as a 31-year-old Mr. Park with contempt,the first time such charges had been applied to an alleged racistoffense. Spurred by the case, which is pending in court, rivalpolitical parties in Parliament have begun drafting legislation thatfor the first time would provide a detailed definition ofdiscrimination by race and ethnicity and impose criminal penalties.

For Mr. Hussain, subtle discrimination has been part of daily life forthe two and half years he has lived here as a student and then researchprofessor at Sungkonghoe University in Seoul. He says that, even incrowded subways, people tend not sit next to him. In June, he said, hefell asleep on a bus and when it reached the terminal, the driver wokehim up by poking him in the thigh with his foot, an extremely offensivegesture in South Korea.

“Things got worse for me this time,because I was with a Korean woman,” Mr. Hussain said in an interview.“Whenever I’ve walked with Ms. Hahn or other Korean women, most of thetime I felt hostilities, especially from middle-aged men.”

South Korea, a country where until recently people were taught to takepride in their nation’s “ethnic homogeneity” and where the words “skincolor” and “peach” are synonymous, is struggling to embrace a newreality. In just the past seven years, the number of foreign residentshas doubled, to 1.2 million, even as the country’s population of 48.7million is expected to drop sharply in coming decades because of itslow birth rate.

Many of the foreigners come here to toil at seaor on farms or in factories, providing cheap labor in jobs shunned bySouth Koreans. Southeast Asian women marry rural farmers who cannotfind South Korean brides. People from English-speaking countries findjobs teaching English in a society obsessed with learning the languagefrom native speakers.

For most South Koreans, globalization haslargely meant increasing exports or going abroad to study. But now thatit is also bringing an influx of foreigners into a society where 42percent of respondents in a 2008 survey said they had never once spokenwith a foreigner, South Koreans are learning to adjust — oftenuncomfortably.

In a report issued Oct. 21, Amnesty Internationalcriticized discrimination in South Korea against migrant workers, whomostly are from poor Asian countries, citing sexual abuse, racialslurs, inadequate safety training and the mandatory disclosure ofH.I.V. status, a requirement not imposed on South Koreans in the samejobs. Citing local news media and rights advocates, it said thatfollowing last year’s financial downturn, “incidents of xenophobia areon the rise.”

Ms. Hahn said, “Even a friend of mine confided tome that when he sees a Korean woman walking with a foreign man, hefeels as if his own mother betrayed him.”

In South Korea, acountry repeatedly invaded and subjugated by its bigger neighbors,people’s racial outlooks have been colored by “pure-blood” nationalismas well as traditional patriarchal mores, said Seol Dong-hoon, asociologist at Chonbuk National University.

Centuries ago, whenKorean women who had been taken to China as war prizes and forced intosexual slavery managed to return home, their communities ostracizedthem as tainted. In the last century, Korean “comfort women,” whoworked as sex slaves for the Japanese Imperial Army, faced a similarstigma. Later, women who sold sex to American G.I.’s in the yearsfollowing the 1950-53 Korean War were despised even more. Theirchildren were shunned as “twigi,” a term once reserved for animalhybrids, said Bae Gee-cheol, 53, whose mother was expelled from herfamily after she gave birth to him following her rape by an Americansoldier.

Even today, the North Korean authorities often forceabortion on women who return home pregnant after going to China to findfood, according to defectors and human rights groups.

“When Itravel with my husband, we avoid buses and subways,” said Jung Hye-sil,42, who married a Pakistani man in 1994. “They glance at me as if Ihave done something incredible. There is a tendency here to controlwomen and who they can date or marry, in the name of the nation.”

Formany Koreans, the first encounter with non-Asians came during theKorean War, when American troops fought on the South Korean side. Thatexperience has complicated South Koreans’ racial perceptions, Mr. Seolsaid. Today, the mix of envy and loathing of the West, especially ofwhite Americans, is apparent in daily life.

The government andmedia obsess over each new report from the Organization for EconomicCooperation and Development, to see how the country ranks against otherdeveloped economies. A hugely popular television program is “Chit Chatof Beautiful Ladies” — a show where young, attractive, mostly Caucasianwomen who are fluent in Korean discuss South Korea. Yet, when SouthKoreans refer to Americans in private conversations, they nearly alwaysattach the same suffix as when they talk about the Japanese andChinese, their historical masters: “nom,” which means “bastards.” TammyChu, 34, a Korean-born film director who was adopted by Americans andgrew up in New York State, said she had been “scolded and yelled at” inSeoul subways for speaking in English and thus “not being Koreanenough.” Then, she said, her applications for a job as an Englishteacher were rejected on the grounds that she was “not white enough.”

Ms.Hahn said that after the incident in the bus last July, her family was“turned upside down.” Her father and other relatives grilled her as towhether she was dating Mr. Hussain. But when a cousin recently marrieda German, “all my relatives envied her, as if her marriage was a boonto our family,” she said.

The Foreign Ministry supports ananti-discrimination law, said Kim Se-won, a ministry official. In 2007,the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discriminationrecommended that South Korea adopt such a law, deploring the widespreaduse of terms like “pure blood” and “mixed blood.” It urged publiceducation to overcome the notion that South Korea was “ethnicallyhomogenous,” which, it said, “no longer corresponds to the actualsituation.”

But a recent forum to discuss proposed legislationagainst racial discrimination turned into a shouting match when severalcritics who had networked through the Internet showed up. They chargedthat such a law would only encourage even more migrant workers to cometo South Korea, pushing native workers out of jobs and creatingcrime-infested slums. They also said it was too difficult to definewhat was racially or culturally offensive.

Conservative Facebookusers are more likely to capitalize words than liberals

Data from five groups of Facebook users (500 users) whodeclared their political views on their user pages (‘very liberal’, ‘liberal’, ‘moderate’, ‘conservative’, and ‘very conservative’) show that the moreconservative users are, the more likely they are to capitalize words. Thiscorrelation is thought to be that liberals are less formal than conservativesin their thinking when it comes to rules and conventions. Conservatives (andliberals) send nonverbal messages to other users by capitalizing (anddecapitalizing) words, as we use nonverbal cues (gestures, facial expressions,etc.) when we talk.

Introduction

When we talk, we use nonverbal messages suchas intonation, gesture, facial expression, and so on.  These messages are important features ofcommunication and we use these all the time, intentionally or unintentionally.When we write, we cannot use these kinds of nonverbal messages to expressthoughts or emotions. Instead, we change styles of words or even wordsthemselves. In formal writings, italicizing, underlining or bolding is oftenused to emphasize certain words. In informal writings, several distinct stylesof writing are used: change of spellings (dafor the, nuthin for nothing, ma for my, etc.), shortening orabbreviations (thnx for thanks, lol for laugh out loud, u for you, ‘cuz for because, etc.), lengthening (borrrrrrrred for bored, ummmmfor um, etc.), capitalizing or decapitalizing (‘I do NOT want it’ instead of ‘I do not want it’, ‘i am’ instead of ‘I am’). Some of themare to mean something that is very difficult for us to convey by words only;for example, to emphasize something (bolding, lengthening, or capitalizing).People who use words such as da(the), ma (my), lol (laugh out loud) are to show others that they share a commonsubculture (hip-hop culture or cyber-culture).

I will call these changes in writing stylesand spellings ‘nonverbal’. Whenpeople write, especially write something informally, they are more likely touse these nonverbal messages in their writings. Internet writing would be agood example for informal writing; postings on blogs, personal pages of socialnetworking sites (MySpace, Facebook, etc.), and discussion forums, all havethese features of nonverbal messages. One of them is capitalization of words.On personal pages of Facebook[1]users – called Info page – peopleleave information about themselves, such as sex, birthday, hometown, politicalviews, interests, favorite movies, etc. On PersonalInformation section, people writetheir interests, favorite activities, favorite music/movies/books, and soforth, for example, “Interests: Painting,Drawing, Hiking”, or “Activities:Sleeping, Vegan baking, Watching TV, Bargain hunting”. In contrast to thefavorites sections (music/TV shows/movies/books) where words and titles areusually written capitalized (e.g. Little Miss Sunshine, Sex and the City), Activities and Interests sections are more likely to be written in lower case or,in other words, decapitalized (e.g. eating, working out, hanging out withfriends): words in titles are usually capitalized, such as ‘Pulp Fiction’ or ‘DreamsFrom My Father’, which makes people use capitalized words, but words thatgo into ‘Activities’ and ‘Interests’ sections – words like sleeping or ski - are not necessarily to be capitalized, even thoughcapitalizing the words is conventional in Facebook (Facebook suggests words aswe are typing in, and these are capitalized).

Dictionaries define conservatism asdisposition to preserve what is established, the tendency to prefer atraditional situation to change, or a political philosophy based on traditionand social stability[2].Core aspects of conservative ideology can be defined as resistance to change[3].If these are true for Facebook users and if it is true that capitalizing isconventional (or traditional) in Facebook, one can imagine that conservativeusers are more likely to use capitalized words than liberal users.

I hypothesize that, for Facebook users whoexplicitly specified their political views, the more conservative they are, themore likely they are to use capitalized letters. Facebook users label theirpolitical views as ‘very liberal’,‘liberal’, ‘moderate’, ‘conservative’, ‘very conservative’, or they do notdeclare it - leave it blank[4].In this study, random Facebook users in Stanford and Silicon Valley network[5]are studied as a control group, and users in the same networks but with theirpolitical views listed are studied as an experimental group (five experimentalgroups, from very liberal to very conservative). I will compare theexperimental groups with the control to test my hypothesis; whether or notthere is a correlation between political views and capitalization. If Facebookusers use capitalization as a way ofcommunication in writings, as nonverbal messages do in speaking, they wouldactively use this method, and it will be shown in the analysis.

Methods

Experiment1: Control group

This experiment is to check basicdemographics of the two Facebook networks and how many Facebook users declaretheir political views and activities/interests on their pages. In thisexperiment, 166 randomly chosen subjects were analyzed. All subjects were inStanford and/or Silicon Valley networks. Information under Info tab of their Facebook pages have been checked. Political Views from Basic Information section and Activities/Interests sections have beenchecked and stored for analysis. Subjects who have both capitalized anddecapitalized words in their Activities/Interests sections are considereddecapitalized cases. Subjects who support Democratic Party are considered‘liberal’, and subjects who support Republican Party are considered‘conservative’. Subjects who support other political parties or declaredthemselves as apathetic, not interested, independent, etc. are considered‘other’.

Experiment2: Experimental groups

This experiment is to see whether people’spolitical views are related to their punctuation habits, especiallycapitalization. Pages of 100 Facebook users have been checked and stored foreach of five political views (‘very liberal’, ‘liberal’, ‘moderate’,‘conservative’, ‘very conservative’) – total of 500 Facebook users – and theirrate of capitalization of words in Activities/Interests sections have beenanalyzed. All subjects are in Stanford and/or Silicon Valley networks. This isdone by Profile Search feature ofFacebook, which allows people to search users by various criteria. 

Results

Experiment1

Among 166subjects, 53 subjects (32%) declared their political views and the rest 113subjects (68%) left it blank.

Figure 1. About 1/3 of the subjectsdeclared their political views.  

 Among those whodeclared their political views, 54.7% were liberal.

According to an article by Inside Facebook[6],the percentage of California users who declared their political views onFacebook is 33.2% and among those, liberals are 52.3% and conservatives are18.8%. The political spectrum of the subjects analyzed in this study is quitesimilar to the one of whole California Facebook users.

Experiment2

The data from 500 subjects (100 from eachpolitical view) were analyzed. As seen in Figure 3, the percentage of users whocapitalize words in their Activities/Interests sections (%Cap) increases aspolitical view gets conservative. The percentage of users who did notcapitalize words (or decapitalize words) (%Decap) decreases as political viewgets conservative. To see this trend more clearly, the differences between thetwo (%Cap - %Decap) are shown below, in Figure 5.

Figure 3. For subjects who listed their politicalviews, 35.1% capitalized words in Activities/Interests sections, 29.5%decapitalized them, and 39.6% left the sections blank.

Figure 4. Percentage of users who capitalized wordsand those who did not capitalize words are shown. There is a trend in bothcases.

As seen in Figure 5, the more conservativethe users are, the more likely they are to capitalize words. People who are very conservative are exceptions in thistrend. But in this graph, people who did not list their activities andinterests (%NotReported) are not included. To see how certain pool of peopleare prone to use capitalized words, I created an index called Capitalization Index.

CapitalizationIndex =

(Num. People who capitalize words –Num. People who decapitalize words) / Total Number of People

The index ranges from -1 to 1. If it isclose to 1 (or -1), most of the subjects that are tested use capitalized (ordecapitalized) words. If it is close to zero, it is either %Cap and %Decap aresimilar, and/or most of the subjects did not list their activities/interests.

Figure 6. CapitalizationIndex: a control group and five groups with different political views.

The Capitalization Index of the control group from Experiment 1 (166subjects) was -0.096. These 166 subjects were selected randomly, and theanalysis from Experiment 1 shows that they are more liberal than conservative;54.7% were liberal.

In addition, the control group subjects (subjects from Experiment 1) areprobably less frequent visitors of Facebook. Althoughdata is not shown in the study, more subjects in the control group have onlybasic information on their pages; name, sex, education, and contactinformation. But users who actively show themselves online, such as subjectsfrom the experimental group (Experiment 2) who actively show their politicalviews, are more likely to be active Facebook users. Thus, I assume that theywould be more likely to capitalize words to make their pages look nicer.

The four experimental groups (‘very liberal’to ‘conservative’) show a very interesting trend: the more they getconservative, the more capitalized words they use. Conservative users are 16percent more likely to capitalize words in their activities/interests sections.In contrast, very liberal users are slightly more likely (2%) to decapitalizewords in the same two sections. It is interesting that the two variables thatseem to be quite unrelated (political view and capitalization index) arecorrelated with each other strongly. But veryconservative users were different. They did not use capitalized words asmuch as conservatives did; they capitalized words as liberals did. And thepercentage of users who decapitalize words is higher than very liberal users (see Figure 4), which requires further analysis.

Discussion

Political views andcapitalization

The data shows that conservative people are more likely to use capitalizedwords than liberals, except the people identified themselves as very conservative. One’s political viewis correlated with one’s habit of using capitalized words. This is probablybecause of the fact that liberals are less formal in their thinking thanconservatives, and generally value traditional beliefs less than conservatives.

The capitalization rules of Facebook are not explicit, but it suggestswords as people type in. For example, if I type ‘swi’ in Activities section, Facebook suggests a list of words: Swimming, Switchfoot,Swingers, etc. (not swimming, switchfoot, swingers). Facebook did not have thisfeature (suggesting words) before – it is a relatively new feature – butcapitalizing of words is a Facebook convention since drop-down menus have allcapitalized words, for example, ‘Sex:Male/Female’, or ‘RelationshipStatus: Single/Married/etc.’ So using decapitalized words is a violation ofthis convention. People often violate rules or convention in informal settingsas seen in writings on an Internet discussion forum. A sample discussion forumis like this (Figure 8). Only ungrammatical posts were excerpted from theforum.

Figure8. A thread from a discussion forum, ‘best advice you ever received’,Thoughts.com. The red color indicates the violation of grammatical rules orconvention.

The users in Figure 8 did not capitalize the first words or the pronoun I,and used multiple dots (….) and ain’t.These violations give us the impression about the writer: e.g. the writer mightbe lazy (since the pronoun I was not capitalized), the writer might belaid-back or easy-going (since s/he didn’t care much about the grammar), and soforth, regardless of the writer’s intention to give the impression.

The rule-breaking (or convention-violating) writing style sends informationabout the writer to readers. It does not change the content of words orsentences, but it could change nuance or impression of words and sentences.

Figure 9.  Activities and Interestssections written in capitalized words.                

Figure10. Activities and Interests sections written in decapitalized words.

The impression I get from the two figures above is that: figure 10, whichis not written in capitalized words, looks free from rules or traditions.Figure 9, which is written in capitalized words, looks like it is written by aperson who likes to get things organized. Other people might feel theimpression different from mine or do not care about the style of writing atall, but some people do care about how to write things on their Facebook pages:they care about the writing styles, especially capitalization in this example.Therefore, one might imagine that liberals are more likely to use the writingstyle of Figure 10, since liberals are less likely to want to conform to rules,and that includes rules of grammar. Words like ‘Running’ or ‘Clarinet’ doesn'trequire capitals, but in general I would say that using capitals reflects aview of the world that is formal and hierarchical. The increasing use of no capitalsin places where capitals used to be required also reflects a less formal, lessdeferential view of the world.

Thecontrol group vs. the experimental groups

But subjects who declared their political viewstend to capitalize more frequently than the control group, who did not listtheir political views (Figure 6). The users from the five experimental groupsare the ones who visit Facebook more frequently than the control group, so theyprobably spent more time polishing their Facebook pages, which may result inusing more capitalized words. It might be that using capitals make the userpages look neater, nicer, and more polished. The control group used lesscapitalized words than the very liberals.This could be the effect of frequency of loyalty to the site. I could notcheck this possibility because I do not have the data of how many visitsFacebook users make, but I assume that the difference between the control andexperimental groups results from the frequent visitor effect, in other words,frequent visitors want their user pages look more refined, which meanscapitalized words. I also assume that the users from the five experimentalgroups visit Facebook as frequently as the others.

Conservatives capitalizewords more often than liberals

The data drawn from 500 Facebook users showthat the hypothesis is true; the more conservative people are, the morecapitalized words they are likely to use. The data is very compelling: 5.2%more liberals capitalize words than very liberals; 4.5% more moderates capitalize words than liberals; 8.7% more conservatives capitalize words than moderates. Surprisingly, 18.4% more conservatives capitalize words than very liberals (Figure 5).

The‘very conservatives’

The veryconservatives do not show the effect of capitalization. Less percentage ofthem capitalized words than the liberals.One of the hidden assumptions I made was that the demographics of the fiveexperimental groups are similar to each other; in other words, thedistributions of age, sex, race, religion, etc. among users are similar to eachother. And maybe this hypothesis does not hold for the very conservative experimental group.

The subjects in this study were drawn fromStanford and Silicon Valley networks, strong Democratic Party orientednetworks. According to the exit poll conducted on the recent presidentialelection day, 75% of Stanford students supported Obama[7].  73% of voters in San Mateo county voted forObama, and 70% of voters in Santa Clara county voted for Obama[8].So statistically, people who can explicitly list themselves as ‘veryconservative’ are rare, and the peer pressure would make the possibility evenrarer. The 166 randomly chosen subjects from Experiment 1 had no very conservative user, which means thatthe percentage of very conservativeFacebook users in Stanford/Silicon Valley networks is at most 0.6%.

Thus, peer pressure would be one of thereasons why very conservatives showless capitalization. They feel the negative peer pressure in this liberal orDemocratic environment, so they need a way to tell people that they are not the“stereotypical” conservatives (e.g. people who drives a pickup with a “supportthe troops” sticker on the bumper, enjoys watching NFL, lives in suburban areain a red state, listens to country music, wearing cowboy jeans, etc.), whichare considered “uncool” among collegestudents and unprofessional in Silicon Valley Hi-Tech companies. So, I thinkthat very conservatives use decapitalization to tell people thatthey are not that kind of stereotypical conservatives that people mightimagine.

Limitationsand further research

One of the limitations of this study is thatthe underlying assumptions might not be true. I assumed that the demographicsof the five experimental groups are similar (The distributions of age, sex,race, and others of the five groups are similar). Because I didn’t and couldn’tcontrol for other factors (e.g. age) when selecting subjects, this might haveaffected the obtained results. But my hypothesis is that there is a correlationbetween political views and capitalization rates, so regardless of age or otherfactors, the two variables should correlate with each other. But anotherpossibility is that there is a mediating variable (one suspect would be age because one’s political view iscorrelated with one’s age), and this variable might have driven the results.So, when possible, age (along withother possible mediating variables) should be controlled to see more meaningfulresults.

This study is done with subjects fromStanford and Silicon Valley networks. The results may not hold for othernetworks or the whole Facebook users. ‘Veryconservatives’ in other networks - especially in red states if myhypothesis is true - may show a larger CapitalizationIndex, because conservatives in red states do not experience negative peerpressure from surrounding liberal Democrats. Therefore, when combined with thisstudy’s results, a study conducted for the whole Facebook users or networkswith more conservative users will show meaningful results.