SHOUTING; emphasis?

[Grant Barrett]

I'm coming late to this, but I think I have a couple of other
perspectives:

-- it's just as easy to leave the caps lock key off and not use the
shift key at all. typing in all lower case, however, has its own
baggage: many people (including me) see it as pretentious.  however, if
one is truly incapable of using the shift key due to some disability,
typing in all lower case would work just as well as all caps, I think,
and possibly better.

-- In the arts/advertising/graphic design business, we are taught that
ALL CAPS should be used sparingly. The yellow pages of a phone book are
pointed to as a place where too much is in caps and too much is bolded,
and so in the effort to garner that one extra bit of attention (which
is not, obviously, what our original poster was doing) is wasted amidst
all the other bold all caps text. I think this applies here (and this
is where I agree some parts of the discussion) by indicating that it is
understood that ALL CAPS is supposed to draw attention to it supposed
importance. An all caps message which is not urgent, imperative or more
significant than other such messages draws unnecessary attention to
itself. I, at least, am conditioned to pay particular attention to an
all caps message. Peter and the wolf and all that.

-- A Google search for "readability of all caps" will return a lot of
results in which someone indicates that he or she believes that ALL
CAPS text is more difficult to read than upper-lower. Whether or not
this is true, I don't know, but I believe. Robin Williams, something of
a design and type expert from the days when desktop publishing was
brand new, puts it well: "We don't read letter by letter - we read in
phrases. A significant factor in our recognition of words is the shape
of the word. But when words are set in all caps, every word has a
rectangular shape and we have to go back to reading the letters. SO,
FOR BETTER READABILITY, AVOID ALL CAPS. "

--
Grant Barrett
gbarrett at worldnewyork.org
Small Business Apple Macintosh Support in New York City
http://www.worldnewyork.org/