THE TITLE LINE IS THE MESSAGE. EVEN THOUGH TYPING IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS IS CONSIDERED SHOUTING AND IS GENERALLY FROWNED UPON ONLINE, QUITE A FEW PEOPLE STILL POST MESSAGES ON FORUMS, SEND EMAIL, HAVE ONLINE DATING PROFILES, OR OTHERWISE INTERACT WITH THE INTERNET WITH THEIR CAPS LOCK LEY STUCK ON. I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT ALL OF THOSE PEOPLE HAVE BROKEN KEYBOARDS. WHY DO SOME PEOPLE TYPE IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, GIVEN THE POOR REPUTATION THE PRACTICE HAS, AND THE DIFFICULTY OF READING IT?
(obligatory lower case, so vBulletin doesn’t change the case of this post)
I know a couple of people whose computer typing use was limited to writing military radio messages. Those are required to be in all caps. When they got introduced to e-mail and Internet forums, they just carried over that habit. In short, not typing in all caps is outside their comfort zone.
Sometimes they’re just new to the Internet and don’t understand it’s poor form until someone tells them. But I know one man in his 80s in the US who routinely does it because of his poor eyesight; he can’t see what he’s typing otherwise. I make allowance for that and don’t mention it. I think it’s great someone that old is interested in the Internet. (No, I don’t type all caps for him myself, so I don’t know how he sees it; maybe prints it out?)
Many people are not “with it” in terms of internet/email culture. I have several times sent reply emails to people saying “Could you please stop SHOUTING” and they have no clue what I mean. Many people are poor typists who can’t (or can’t be bothered to) use the shift key, but who think (perhaps correctly) that all caps at least looks kind of urgent/efficient/military whereas all lower case looks juvenile.
Actually, I think these people are subconsciously smart and and preempting the next evolution of the English language. I mean, why have lower and upper case letters when it can just be all upper? We could then get rid of the shift and caps lock keys from our keyboards. We would also save so much time from not having to push the shift key every sentence. We would not have to worry about whether we have to capitalize a word in a title. It would save time editing a document! Efficiency people! Don’t we live in a capitalist society? Does capitalism not mean efficiency?!!
What is even more baffling is when someone Capitalises Every Word In A Sentence. I have seen this phenomenon several times on other message boards. I have never figured out why they do something that takes twice as long as it does to type normally.
On some boards (including this one, I think) the software changes posts that are entirely caps to initial caps - so it could be that.
Re: the OP - I’ve come across several people who, when they first turn on their computers, hit Caps Lock and leave it like that all day - when I asked them why they did that, their answer tends to be a blend of ‘I’ve always done it that way’ and ‘It makes everything easier to read’. They are typically not amenable to persuasion.
Back in the 1970s and 1980s, some home computers lacked lowercase characters. If you’re reading Usenet posts from the 1980s, then this might answer your question. But if you’re talking about recent documents, then whoever is writing them probably just isn’t observing basic netiquette.
Wouldn’t it be easier to simply increase the default font size on his computer? Any decent operating system will have a system-wide setting for this. There should also be high-contrast colour schemes, mouse pointer trails, and other accessibility features for people with poor eyesight. Maybe you could let him know about these features, or pay him a visit if he’s not too far away and you are familiar with his operating system.
Non-native speakers of English often use capitals in Wierd Ways based on their mother tongue. For example, doesn’t German capitalize all Nouns? By contrast, Arabic has no Capitals, so native arabic speakers Writing in english sometimes simply misapply the rules And the mistakes are not obvious to Them also since Arabic has no “sentences” as we have them in English.
When native speakers adopt peculiar capitalization regimes, I have no idea what’s going on.
It really looks like shouting. In works of fiction, shouting is very often rendered in caps. People aren’t just making it up - it really looks like shouting. let me say it again, louder; IT REALLY LOOKS LIKE SHOUTING, OK?
Sort of useful, really.