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2009-09-03 10:07:38
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.