To Get (And Keep) People's Attention, Stop Using All Caps
This is going to be controversial, but you should never use ALL CAPS for more than a word or two. Typing sentences with only upper-case characters makes your words less legible.
Take a look at these two type samples:
You might think that the all caps version is more legible because all of the letters are bigger. And bigger is better, right? Not always. The shape of words has a huge impact on legibility. Let's zoom in on just one word from above. Here's how "great" compares with "GREAT."
In the entertainingly-named book Stop Stealing Sheep, Erik Spiekermann and E.M. Ginger make the case that the profile of a word helps us to read it quickly. The descending portion of a "g" helps distinguish it from the ascending portion of a "t." (In typography these are known as descenders and ascenders.) If you draw a box around "great" and "GREAT," you'll see that the all caps version sacrifices some distinguishing characteristics of the word. The "G" has the same profile as the "T" (and the other letters too.)
For one or two words, all caps isn't too hard to read. But over the course of a sentence or an entire book it hurts the legibility. It also becomes visually monotonous. Here's how "With great power comes great responsibility" looks when you focus on just the profile:
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Legibility is the main reason to avoid typing in all caps. Another reason is that using all caps makes it harder to emphasize key words.
Most people add emphasis to a word by using all caps, bold type, italics, or underlines. But if you set the entire sentence in capital letters then you give up one of your tools. If I write "Do NOT eat my yogurt," the NOT stands out. It underscored my point. If on the other hand I write "DO NOT EAT MY YOGURT" then the emphasis is lost. The sentence not only looks like shouting, it looks like MONOTONOUS shouting.
There are some places where all-caps lettering is the norm:
In conclusion, do not use all caps. It hurts legibility and it makes it harder to emphasize the words you want to stress (especially on social media or in other places where you have limited control over the formatting.
Or, if you're not convinced yet:
IN CONCLUSION, DO NOT USE ALL CAPS. IT HURTS LEGIBILITY AND IT MAKES IT HARDER TO EMPHASIZE THE WORDS YOU WANT TO STRESS (ESPECIALLY ON SOCIAL MEDIA OR IN OTHER PLACES WHERE YOU HAVE LIMITED CONTROL OVER THE FORMATTING.)
Founder, Chairman @ Ryff | Immersive Technology Adviser
9 个月How rediculous. Because people who do not use capitals are just trying to be cool but are in fact advertising their stupidity. Worse for them it is possible discover who someone is when they post this way. For example on Glassdoor or the Daily Mail forums, etc. All you need is to give ChatGPT known samples of the author/writer. This is because grammar has deliberate, established rules whereas woke non grammar (as I think of it) is almost always uniquely identifiable. This is because the author is writing without rules and therefore more uniquely. Or to be more accurate, badly