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By Laura Schocker
BBC News Magazine
A New Zealand woman has lost her accounting job after sending "confrontational"
e-mails filled with block capitals. So why is it taboo to hit the caps-lock
key?
"TO ENSURE YOUR STAFF CLAIM IS PROCESSED AND PAID, PLEASE DO FOLLOW THE BELOW
CHECK LIST."
The actual words may seem harmless enough, but their appearance ultimately
contributed to the firing of ProCare Health worker Vicki Walker in Auckland.
It was one of a number of e-mails that her employer claimed, at a tribunal, had
spread disharmony at work. Some also "provocatively" contained highlighted
phrases in bold or red, the tribunal heard.
Most web users know capital letters are a capital offence - they're commonly
thought to be online shorthand for screaming. But how did they get this
reputation?
Historically, capped letters portrayed a certain formality, says Paul Luna,
director of the department of typography and graphic communication at the
University of Reading.
"They're associated with things like Roman inscriptions and the formal
presentation of text," he says. "They have a certain sort of architectural
quality."
The forum in ancient Rome, for instance, showcased the emperors' great deeds
written in capital letters.
'Make page grey'
While capitals were reserved for the best and the greatest, lowercase letters
in the Latin alphabet - which English is based on - developed as a faster way
to write, says Mr Luna.
The thing about e-mail is that there's no particular etiquette
Martin Manser Good Word Guide
And over time, capitals have become a way to set text apart - whether to
articulate the beginning of a new sentence or to mark a major heading in a
book. While they were sometimes used for emphasis, typographers typically
didn't like the look of the dense text blocks that make the page appear grey,
says Mr Luna.
In the print-based world, other options, like bold and italics, became more
common, leaving capital letters for proper nouns and sentence beginnings. But
the internet changed all that, he says.
The high resolution of a printed page is enough to make bold and italics stand
out, but the lower quality of a screen often requires people to revert to the
caps-lock key to make a point.
And while printing houses and publishing companies have traditionally regulated
the use of capitalisation, the web is a bit of a free-for-all, says Martin
Manser, author of the Good Word Guide.
"The thing about e-mail is that there's no particular etiquette. The whole
thing is more fluid," he says. "In written letters, there are definite
conventions that are right or wrong."
Ultimately, in the rushed world of online communication, all-caps has become a
bit of a "lazy" shorthand for yelling - it's faster than finding another way to
convey excitement or agitation. But the recipient feels like they are being
shouted at.
And is there also a physical reason? Are all of those rectangular letters hard
on the eyes?
Some studies say yes - indicating that people read by recognizing the shapes of
letters within words and that the lowercase versions have more shape
differentiations than block capitals.
But Mr Luna says this is "nonsense" - pointing to new research that has found
capitals and lower-case letters make no real difference. Instead, the caps-lock
key has become a tool for writers.
"It's a great aid to articulating a message, really," he says.
And if that means the occasional CAPITAL e-mail, then so be it.