The "A/all" convention

[Alliteration]

I see a lot of people in D/s chatrooms enter with greetings such as "hi A/all", or "hello E/everyone". Does anyone know the etymology of this? I can't understand why people do it or how it got started.

I mean, I get that capitalizing Dom or Domme is a respect/power issue; I'm assuming that the motivation behind A/all is similar. But...

1) "all" and "everyone" are not proper nouns or titles...there's no precedent for starting them with a capital letter, the way we do with "president" or "queen", for example. Imagine how weird it would look if someone logged into a vanilla chat and said "hello Everyone"; "I like All of you", etc.

2) Don't subs deserve respect as well? Maybe it's kind of demeaning to subs to not have the privilege of being referred to with a capital letter? If there was a sub named "Frank", you wouldn't call him "frank"; that would be rude.

3) What about switches? Where do they fit into "A/all"?

I'm not criticizing anyone who does this, of course...just wondering about it. Does anyone have any insights for M/me?

[chastity]

Actually, I do.

Once upon a time a guy called John Lange using the pseudonym John Norman who wrote a whole series of novels promoting a male dominated society where women were seen as the prize for strong men. There are some really very bad films if you are a masochist. John's world was called Gor and his fictions are Gorean if you want to look it up.

It came from exactly the same place as his idea of slaves talking in the third person.

I could go on but I will simply ask you to google.

HOUSEPLANTS OF GOR

[Alliteration]

Actually, I do.

Once upon a time a guy called John Lange using the pseudonym John Norman who wrote a whole series of novels promoting a male dominated society where women were seen as the prize for strong men. There are some really very bad films if you are a masochist. John's world was called Gor and his fictions are Gorean if you want to look it up.

It came from exactly the same place as his idea of slaves talking in the third person.

I could go on but I will simply ask you to google.

HOUSEPLANTS OF GOR

Oh, it's a gorean thing? Never really been much of a fan myself...

Any idea why the "general community" adopted it?

[les]

This protocol is often called
"slashy speak."

Believe it or not it was started by the scribes of old.
These were mainly slaves and used the protocol between them selves.

This is also why even to day
"Proper" nouns and names are capitalised, as well as the various other reasons to capitalise words.

See also
Are W/we D/dom/mes or S/subs

[Alliteration]

This protocol is often called
"slashy speak."

Believe it or not it was started by the scribes of old.
These were mainly slaves and used the protocol between them selves.

This is also why even to day
"Proper" nouns and names are capitalised, as well as the various other reasons to capitalise words.

See also
Are W/we D/dom/mes or S/subs

Dang, I wish I had seen that topic before making this one :P

thanks !es

[les]

Alli,
I had put you as a "newb", (a beginner who is willing to learn;)
And not a "noob" (FAQing useless)

Chuckles
Pats your head and ruffles your hair

[Nezhul]

What about switches? Where do they fit into "A/all"?

here, maybe:

"A/all"

personally I don't like it. It looks as if a person who use that form is not talking about something, but just enjoying the coolness of capitals and lower case. I saw people who are using that in every word, Y/you, H/he, S/she etc, and their whole post becomes a mess of slashes.

[les]

All to often people blindly follow without reason and mess ensues.

The convention is
Dominant Capitalised
subservient in lower case.

The same methodology is used for/by a switch, dependent on the other partner/s
The only time S/slashy speak is used is greeting a mixed group.

There after each is Upper or lower case according to their station.

                                   IMHO

I use the slash for different reasons/needs.

[shell]

The chat rooms I come from....they all used that sort of writing. It's been hard to change....and only once or twice do I catch myself still doing it.

It was a respect thing.....if you said "I hope all of you have a good night".....since you were speaking to both subs and Dominate people, you were to..(realizes I just capped "Dominate"....).....anyways, you were to show respect by acknowledging the Dominate as superior by making them bigger, then the submissives.
The way to do that would be, "I hope A/all of Y/you have a good night".

It was so common that I spent so much time, cleaning up vanilla/family type emails from capped or lower case letters.

I am glad that Master made me see the equality, so that I do not have to go to those extremes any longer. *Smile*

[Nezhul]

Well I guess it's silly. Even if I'm a submissive, why would I have to treat other doms highly? It's not like I submit to THEM. I'd have one dominant person, right, and the rest are just people in a crowd. I may know they are dominants, but I don't owe them any more respect than to anyone else. For me those doms and their subs would be equal people.

On the other hand, If I'm a dom, I don't see a point in treating other submissives somewhat special. I don't see a point in degrading them.

And yet another point. I can't see myself taking notice of how I was adressed by strangers. I may have any kind of arrangement on a matter with my subs or dom, BUT when some random stranger tells me something... That'd be ridiculous. Just imagine: "Oh no!!! You capitalized the word while adressing me, and I'm a submissive! I should go hand myself for receiving too much attention!"
or better yet:
"You didn't capitalize while you adressed me! I'm a dom! BEG me for mercy!"

Plain ridiculous. As I see it those slashed words may be used either by habit (most of the time) or by someone with strange tweaks in the self-confidence sphere. But I'll say it again - mostly it's a stupid custom that makes the posts harder to read. I think that weather you say something capitalized or not will not satisfy or hurt anyone. Doms won't give a shit if a remark to them is lower case, so won't subs notice a capitalized "You".

[les]

Yup
No argument from most at Milo

That's why I only use capitalisation as taught by my English teacher at school.

[Human]

I agree with Nezhul. Actually if capitalisation is used, I'm fine with it, but this slash thing really annoys me. It makes things harder to read, and its like the poster is living in two worlds.

[quazwierdcev225]

i have recently started conversing with a Mistress from cockcontrol.com and while i don't usually type the Letter I and whatnot in lowercase or type You in uppercase i asked Her if She requires it (W/we also talk via Yahoo Messenger which is one of the many reasons why i think She is so amazing). She replied that if W/we are talking via IM it's not big deal, but if it's an email or something else that's easy to edit then it is a must. Plus if i ever forget She doesn't make a big fuss about it. i just wanted to say that i think She has a good policy of when capitalization is or isn't required. Just my two bits about A/all, W/we, etc. Btw i took great care with this post to make sure that I capitalized when necessary and always lowercase my "i." i often forget to do such a thing.

[Nezhul]

the point is not in capitalizing or not. The point is in using slashed words.

[shell]

Doms won't give a shit if a remark to them is lower case, so won't subs notice a capitalized "You".

On this web site Doms do not seem to care. But at other sites, they do care, to the point that submissives are shunned if they do not follow protocol.