WHY DO CAPS MAKE MY BRAIN WINCE? IT REALLY BOTHERS ME TO READ THIS. I KNOW IT BUGS MANY OTHER PEOPLE AND HAS LONG BEEN A FLAME REASON ON BILLBOARDS FOR 20 YEARS OR MORE. EVEN TYPING THIS GIVES ME A HEADACHE.
WHY?
[sub]-tcat[/sub]
Wow…the subject was supposed to be in all caps too…I didn’t know that got corrected when you post…
I dunno but it does the same to me…
I DON’T KNOW WHY BUT CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW GOOD MY DAD WRITES EMAILS LIKE THIS AND EVEN THOUGH I TELL HIM NOT TO I GUESS THE OTHER POINT I’M TRYING TO MAKE IS THAT PEOPLE WHO TYPE LIKE THIS USUALLY TYPE IN RUN-ON / NONSENSICAL SENTENCES AS WELL.
I seem to remember reading (likely somewhere on these boards) that the uniform shape of capital letters (all basically square-ish) forces the brain to look at every letter in a word, rather than recognising words by their shapes and context, as we often do. Surely you’ve seen the slashdot article, or received the forward storlen from it, in which people had no trouble reading words as long as the first and last letters were in their proper places? lkie tihs, I maen. We rely on the shapes more than the actual letters. We don’t have that when its all-caps, and so we actually have to :gasp: read all the letters to make the word.
Likely someone else will know more than I do, but I think that’s part of it.
Hasn’t this been asked and answered about ten times in the past week in the “Tihs is ralely isterenting - sudty at fmauos usinverity” threads?
It bothers me not at all, other than giving me the knowledge that the author is a clueless idot.
Incidentely, there was a chat room I was patronizing for a long time, and when I or someone else entered I always felt like giving a big happy, jovial “HELLO, <WHOEVER>!”
That was pretty much the only thing I ever typed in all caps, and I didn’t think it mattered, until one day, someone snapped and tore into me about it! I was shocked, but once the whole room supported the accuser, I gained a new respect for how much capital letters really irritate some people…
To me, it’s never read like “shouting.”
It reads like “robot.”
I can’t avoid putting a 1950’s badly vocoded robot voice to such posts. Probably a side-effect of all the pulp science-fiction I read as an adolescent.
THE QICUK BOWRN FOX JMUEPD OEVR THE LZAY DGOS
The qicuk bowrn fox jmuepd oevr the lzay dgos
Just as readable to me either way. I don’t know, mnemosyne, what do you think?
The thing is, aryk29, that’s a well-known sentence. I didn’t really have to read it, because I knew what it was going to say already after just seeing a couple of words.
I am not an expert on any of this. I just posted what I’d read, and it kind of makes sense to me. I can read really quickly when things are in a “normal” font, but even just switching to all-italics slows me down considerably. I learned to read “normal” fonts, and alternates just don’t work as well in my brain. I end up having to read every word/letter rather than skimming like I usually do.
I might be wrong.
I’ve never heard that sentance before in my life, or if I have, I don’t remember it. And, yes, it was just as readable either way.
Clearly, then, it depends on the person. I have no trouble with italics - actually I can read umop ap!sdn or in egami rorrim. Maybe it’s because I learned to read while I was a baby.
Anyway, celebrate diversity! 
[hijack]
BTW, CaptBushido, I’ve seen that sentence, only with “dog” instead of “dogs” used to test typewriters. It has every letter of the alphabet except the ‘s’ that I added. Also common is “jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz”.
[/hijack]
PLEASE COME HOTEL MONTANA MADRID AM RATHER IN TROUBLE BRETT
I agree the all caps thing is extremely frustrating, more annoying still is that many old cellphones send text messages in caps.
My girlfriends phone sends messages in caps and it annoys the hell out of me.
mY MOTHER IN LAW WRITES EMAILS THAT LOOK LIKE THIS??? iT GIVES ME AND wASHTE HEADACHES??
All-caps annoys me because it makes me think of hollering (because normally, caps are used for emphasis on words when bold and italic are unavailable - so putting it all in caps means emphasizing every word) or telegrams.
ITALICS, BOLD.