Why Are Caps Rude?

That’s amazing. Just as Doebi said, I swear that first paragraph was significantly easier to read than the same in all-caps.

But, as has been said before, all caps sucks 'cause you can’t let your brain read “word shapes” (as all the characters are the same size.) With all-lowercase, you still retain all you word shapes and your comprehension is almost as fast as a properly capitalized sentence. If you’re going to be lazy, stick with all-lowercase.

weiner-whiners.
Weiner-Whiners
WEINER-WHINERS

Each more elegant than the last.

What was that story about the time-travellers who go hunting for dinosaurs, and the one guy steps on a butterfly, and when they get back the world is altered? I think all the signs had this crazy style of writing on them.

So Mangetout, I ask you: who stepped on your butterfly?

You know, I’ve always wondered why legal contracts like software EULAs and ISP terms of service always contain big blocks of text in all caps, like this:

Section IX: No Warranty
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” WITH NO WARRANTY, GUARANTEE, OR ASSERTION OF FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. GLOBAL TETRAHEDRON CORPORATION IS NOT LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES THAT MAY RESULT FROM THE FAILURE OF THE SOFTWARE TO PERFORM AS EXPECTED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA, LOSS OF PROFIT, CATASTROPHIC SYSTEM FAILURE, OR “RECTUM? I DAMN NEAR KILLED EM”. YOU AGREE THAT THE SOFTWARE SHALL NOT BE USED AS AN INTEGRAL PART OF ANY LIFE SUPPORT DEVICE OR MISSION CRITICAL APPLICATION WITHOUT THE WRITTEN AUTHORIZATION OF GLOBAL TETRAHEDRON CORPORATION. THIS SECTION MAY BE LIMITED OR RENDERED VOID BY LOCAL LAWS IN YOUR JURISDICTION.

Why do they write it in all caps, instead of using a more readable form of emphasis? Are they trying to make you skip over it?

01000001011011100110010000100000010010010010000001100010011001010111010000100000011101000110100001101001011100110010000001101001011100110010000001110100011010000110010100100000011011010110111101110011011101000010000001100001011011100110111001101111011110010110100101101110011001110010000001101111011001100010000001110100011010000110010101101101001000000110000101101100011011000010000100001101000010100000110100001010010000100100000101010111010000010100100001000001010010000100000101001000010000010100100001000001010010000100000100100001001000010010000100100001

t3h r34L quE57i0|| i5, r j0o 1337??!!?!!11!1one!!!

I AGREE WITH CORNDOG MAN, AND THE ONLY THING THAT KEEPS ME FROM TYPING LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME IS BECAUSE I GOT TIRED OF ALL THE RUDE BACK-LASH FROM IT.

ALSO, I DISAGREE WITH THE PERSON WHO SAID IT IS HARDER TO READ. FOR ME AT LEAST, IT IS MUCH EASIER TO READ.

I MAY GO BACK TO IT, AND SAY FUCK-YOU TO WHOEVER DOESN’T LIKE IT. I THINK IT IS RUDE FOR VIRTUALLY EVERYONE TO COMMENT ON IT. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ME TRYING TO “SHOUT”. IT’S THE INTERNET FOR CHRIST SAKE. GROW-UP PEOPLE.

PEACE LADY

Every poster has his / her own personal twit filter located in the used control panel. You can add anyone who you consider a twit to a list there to hide their posts.

**N.B. - I am making no implications concerning any person in this thread. **

So, Peace Lady it’s rude for us to say that ALL CAPS is hard to read, but it’s not rude for you to tell us too fuck off?

GAH!

I can’t believe I did that.

“for you to fuck off?”

I think it’s really rich that a post like this comes from someone styling herself “Peace Lady”.

Amusing use of hyphens, too.

As noted above, the internet, as with all forms of communication, has conventions and protocols. A rude action would be to continually flout those conventions. People who are being addressed rudely are liable to respond with rudeness. (Miss Manners disapproves of that action, but it is, regrettably, a human characteristic.) So the people whom you have accused of rudeness are simply responding to your rudeness.

If you make a point of declaring “I choose to be rude!” and then carry out that threat, I am afraid that you will, indeed, be subjected to rude responses.

Further, you may choose to not believe that all caps is more difficult to read, but you will be kind enough to note that the claim is actually supported by evidence. Whatever your personal feeling on the topic, there are genuine facts to support the opposite position.

(BTW, the internet was created to survive a war, not particularly for Christ’s sake.)

Hey, cut Peace Lady some slack, willya? She’s still at the stage of forwarding Internet chain letters without checking them first at Snopes.com.

Perhaps some day she’ll discover the benefits of critical thinking. :wink:

aCTUALLY, WHAT i really HATE IS WHEN i ACCIDENTALLY HAVE THE CAPS ON. tHEN i DON’T NOTICE UNTIL i’M ALL DONE TYPING. uSUALLY WHEN i AM TRANSCRIBING FROM A HARD COPY DOCUMENT AND DON’T LOOK UP FROM IT UNTIL i AM FINISHED.

Is there a quick alt or ctrl function to reverse the above? There was a feature on my ancient stand-alone word processor in which you could highlight a block of text and reverse the case.

Well, you can always C&P it to MS Word, then select Format => Change Case => tOGGLE cASE, then C&P it back.

(I had a macro ot handle that in ISPF, but I doubt that you’re running SPF/PC or SPF/2 on your machine.)

Well, Peace lady, I can only assume, then, that you are completely indifferent to whether or not anyone bothers to read what you post. If you are posting as a form of masturbation, then in fact it would be rude of us to allow our gaze to fall upon such a private act. Carry on.

ThE maSTeR doEs nOt aPPrOve oF bAd tyPiNG…

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CRBCYR FNL VG’F UNEQ GB ERNQ OHG GURL NER FGHCVQ ONFGNEQF. SBE ZR NG YRNFG, VG’F ZHPU RNFVRE GB ERNQ. VG UNF ABGUVAT GB QB JVGU ZR GELVAT GB “GNYX VA PBQR” BE “UVQR NALGUVAT SEBZ NALOBQL” BE “ZNXR SHA BS LBH SBE GLCVAT VA NYY PNCF YVXR N 1960’F FGLYR GRYRGLCR ENL”. VG VF WHFG NABGURE NYCUNORG NAQ VG’F WHFG NF TBBQ NF GUR BAR RIRELBAR RYFR HFRF.

WRFHF PUEVFG, CRBCYR, VG’F GUR VAGREARG. RIRELGUVAT TBRF BA GUR VAGREARG. LBH PNA’G GRYY ZR UBJ ABG GB GLCR HAYRFF LBH’ER N SNFPVFG. TEBJ HC!

ZE2001

And perhaps someday pigs will sprout wings, Rush Limbaugh comes out of the closet, and Ann Coulter admits she was just kidding all along.

Thi staru wos collid ‘Temi Sofore’, byt thi longyogi wos mari o sempli chongi en thi ginirol derictean af phanitec letiroletu.

Mu ynysyol pasteng stuli es jyst thi risylt af hoveng swoppid thi kiucops an mmu kiubaord, os e minteanid.

[sub]The story was called ‘Time Safari’, but the language was more a simple change in the general direction of phonetic literality

My unusual posting style is just the result of having swapped the keycaps on my keyboard, as I mentioned[/sub]