I sometimes see comments on various places where every word in the post is capitalized. I don’t mean ALL CAPS, I Mean Posts Written Like This, Long Strings Of Capitalized Words. I can understand all-caps posts made with the caps-lock on. I can understand all lowercase posts from the lazy. I can understand random incorrectly capitalized words from the ignorant. But every word capitalized seems like something done deliberately, and it is more tedius than any other way of writing it. So I’m wondering if there is some sort of writing software being used that automatically capitalizes every word? I know Word (and likely other word processors) can reformat to title case, but this seems to be people using a default.
The only times I’ve seen that is in text written by people who are clearly not native English speakers. I assume they are just unfamiliar with English capitalization rules.
I think some message board software automatically converts all caps into title case (vbulletin maybe?)
I don’t know any routine that automatically does that, but that practice is called Headline Case, due to the use in headlines. Every word except for “a” and “and” is capitalized.
I should have said Proper Case (where every word has an initial capital)
Title case is where certain words (of, and, but, or etc) are left in lower case.
I remember it happening automatically here on (some version of) this board
I’ve not come across that type of headline case that only leaves “a” and “and” in lowercase. (Or am I misreading your post? It seems weird one would leave capitalized “or” and “an.”) AP Style has more rules to it. For example, all articles are lowercase. Short prepositions and conjunctions (under four letters) are lowercase, etc.
Headline Case: I wasn’t intending to be literal or detailed in my description, and there appears to be some variation in what small words are capitalized – possibly for space reasons.
Not to mention some authors who use first-letter caps for effect. I.e., A. A. Milne, Tom Wolfe.
In the decades that I’ve been frequenting this message board, I’ve always (until recently) used title case. It just seemed appropriate. However, this is one aspect of writing in American English that I just never fully learned properly, even though I always excelled in English classes in school and have even made money professionally writing. So many of my thread titles bear the long string of capitalized text.
I’m trying to stop, I promise.
Really? I haven’t done a deep dive on your posting to check, but I’m not sure you understood the OP–I’m not talking about thread titles with every word capitalized, I’m talking about full posts, as in a block of hundreds of words, all of them capitalized. Did You Used To Post All Your Messages Like That?
My apologies @Darren_Garrison – I did, in fact, not fully understand the OP. No, I’ve never posted my messages like that.
Tonight I saw a new example of what I was talking about in a local Facebook group:
Thank You All That Visited Bojangles On Today.Thank You It Has Been Super Busy Today!! We Worked With Who Could Work.I Opened At 4am n Business Was Booming…We May Have 2 Phone Calls Of Orders Messed Up Which I’m Truly Sorry But I Always Do My Best To Make It Right. I Have Some Amazing Employees That Work Hard So I Say This To Say Thank You For Your Support And Not Being Rude. Remember It’s Hot Outside So It’s Even Hotter For Us Inside Bare With Us Please.
My Google Voice Typing on my phone sometimes kicks into this mode and cannot be dissuaded until I restart the phone. Add it to the list of stupid voice typing behaviors, right after capitalizing random words but not capitalizing words that are only proper nouns.
Yep. It’s a Phone Thing.
My text messages do it occasionally.
I use Dragon Naturally Speaking. In my work I often have to write “Solomon”. To do this in Dragon I have to say “cap solomon” Which it Hears as “Caps On”.
To Avoid Distracting Myself I Often Dictate While Not Looking at the Screen and Then I Come Back to Find Three Paragraphs That Have Been Typed like This which is Very Annoying Because There Is No Easy Shortcut for Converting This Back to Normal Text.
This Has Never Happened to Me While Posting on the SDMB (Except in This Post) but I’m Just Ranting about It Here Because It Seems Appropriate.
You can in Word on a Windows.
“I use dragon naturally speaking. In my work i often have to write “solomon”. To do this in dragon i have to say “cap solomon” which it hears as “caps on”.
To avoid distracting myself i often dictate while not looking at the screen and then i come back to find three paragraphs that have been typed like this which is very annoying because there is no easy shortcut for converting this back to normal text.
This has never happened to me while posting on the sdmb (except in this post) but i’m just ranting about it here because it seems appropriate.”
It doesn’t capitalize “I” and such, but it’s less annoying than fixing each word.
Of course, it’s just easier to fix “solomon” but you’ve probably figured that out already.
We’ve got one here.
I POSTED THIS POST IN ALL CAPS. LET’S SEE WHAT HAPPENS.
Never mind, it won’t even let me submit that at all.
It seems to be fairly consistent with that poster’s (small) oeuvre. So just a style quirk.
For your posting pleasure, a “Title Case” converter
(Should Probably Have Used It To Make This Post Because Writing In Title Case Is Really Awkward And Irritating, Especially On A Mobile Device)
You Can Also Use Your Favorite Artificial Intelligence Chatbot to Do the Same Thing.
Or:
You Can Also Use Your Favorite Artificial Intelligence Chatbot To Do The Same Thing.