You may or may not have heard that Yahoo! (YHOO: sentiment, chart, options), which balked at a recent takeover attempt by Microsoft (MSFT), is now steeling itself for a proxy battle led by renegade investor Carl Icahn. And you may or may not be surprised to hear that, once again, YHOO's top brass are balking at the suggestion that their shareholder value is not sufficiently maximized. (Have they seen a monthly chart of their stock price?) Anyway, a blog posting today by Peter Kafka at the Silicon Alley Insider highlighted one facet of this M&A melee that appeals to my English-major sensibilities: the absolute refusal of Yahoo chief Jerry Yang to respect the rules of capitalization.

In an all-hands memo to Yahoo employees bearing the subject line "today's new," Yang refers to his chief-executive self as "i" rather than "I," and notes that "mr. icahn's letter reflects a significant misunderstanding of the facts about the microsoft proposal...", all without deigning to tap his shift key. Elsewhere, Yang (or should I say "yang") displays a distinct disdain for the use of commas. Finally, the memo devolves into an "faq" section. Kafka sums it up best when he says, "We'd like to give Jerry credit for straight talk here, but it'd be easier to do so if he didn't repeat the same phrase -- "transforming the online experiences of our users, advertisers, publishers and developers" -- three times in the same missive." (Four times, if you include the preceding text of his email.)

And, indeed, there is a bit of a 1984 feel to the memo. Yang asserts that Yahoo is "a great company," and employees should keep working hard, ignore any talk about the buyout, and realize that "mr. icahn" simply doesn't understand Yang's strategy. Gee, thanks for the reassurance, big brother.