All caps
Encyclopedia
In typography
, all caps (short for "all capitals" or "all capitalized") refers to text or a font
in which all letters are capital letters. All caps is usually used for emphasis. It is commonly seen in the titles on book covers, in advertisements
and in newspaper headlines. Short strings of words in capital letters appear bolder and "louder" than mixed case, and this is sometimes referred to as "shouting".
All caps can also be used to indicate that a given word is an acronym.
Studies have been conducted on the readability and legibility of all caps text. Some 20th century scientific testing indicates that all caps text is less legible and less readable than lower case text. Colin Wheildon stated that there is an "apparent consensus" that lower case text is more legible.
were written in a single case, which is now considered to be capital letters. However, the shapes of words set in lowercase provide a valuable cue to readers that helps speed the process of reading; type in all caps forms a rectangular shape for every word, which makes distinguishing words harder. As a result, text in all caps is not widely used in body copy, as it is difficult to read in extended passages. The major exception to this is the so-called small print
in legal documents.
Capital letters have been widely used in printed headlines from the early days of newspapers until the 1950s. In the 1990s, more than three quarters of newspapers in the western world used lower case letters in headline text. Discussion regarding the use of all caps for headlines centers on the greater emphasis offered by all caps versus the greater legibility offered by lower case letters. Colin Wheildon conducted a scientific study with 224 readers who analyzed various headline styles and concluded that "Headlines set in capital letters are significantly less legible than those set in lower case."
became standard, allowing lowercase characters.
With the advent of the internet, all caps in messages became closely identified with "shouting" or attention-seeking behaviour and is considered very rude. As a result, netiquette
generally discourages the use of all caps when posting messages online. While all caps can be used as an alternative to bolding for a single word or phrase, to express emphasis, repeated use of all caps can be considered "shouting" or irritating.
In programming, writing in all caps (possibly with underscore
s replacing space
s) is an identifier naming convention in many programming language
s that symbolizes that the given identifier represents a constant.
countries) of distinguishing the surname
from the rest of a personal name
by stylizing the surname only in all caps. This practice is also common among Japanese, when they spell their names in roman letters.
, for his landmark work, Legibility of Print, performed scientific studies on the legibility and readability of all-capital print. His findings were as follows:
According to Tinker, “As early as 1914, Starch reported that material set in Roman lower case was read somewhat faster than similar material printed in all capitals.” Another study in 1928 showed that “all-capital text was read 11.8 per cent slower than lower case, or approximately 38 words per minute slower,” and that “nine tenths of adult readers consider lower case more legible than all capitals.”
A 1955 study by Miles Tinker showed that “all-capital text retarded speed of reading from 9.5 to 19.0 per cent for the 5 and 10 minute time limits, and 13.9 per cent for the whole 20 minute period.” Tinker concluded that, “Obviously, all-capital printing slows reading to a marked degree in comparison with Roman lower case.”
Tinker provides the following explanations for why all capital printing is more difficult to read:
All caps text should be eliminated from most forms of composition, according to Tinker: “Considering the evidence that all-capital printing retards speed of reading to a striking degree in comparison with lower case and is not liked by readers, it would seem wise to eliminate such printing whenever rapid reading and consumer (reader) views are of importance. Examples of this would include any continuous reading material, posters, bus cards, billboards, magazine advertising copy, headings in books, business forms and records, titles of articles, books and book chapters, and newspaper headlines.”
Colin Wheildon stated that there is an "apparent consensus" that lower case text is more legible, but that some editors continue to use all caps in text regardless. In his studies of all caps in headline
s, he states that, "Editors who favor capitals claim that they give greater emphasis. Those who prefer lower case claim their preferences gives greater legibility." Wheildon, who informs us that "When a person reads a line of type, the eye recognizes letters by the shapes of their upper halves," asserts that recognizing words in all caps "becomes a task instead of a natural process." His conclusions, based on scientific testing in 1982–1990, are: "Headlines set in capital letters are significantly less legibile than those set in lower case."
John Ryder, in the Case for Legibility, stated that "Printing with capital letters can be done sufficiently well to arouse interest and, with short lines, reading at a slowed speed is possible – but in principle too many factors of low legibility are involved."
Other critics are of the opinion that all caps letters in text are often "too tightly packed against each other".
using "text-transform: uppercase;". For example, the HTML
renders as
In many cases, this is better than typing text directly in capitals, because one can easily change text style—such as replacing all caps with bold or a colored font—if deemed necessary.
Typography
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading , adjusting the spaces between groups of letters and adjusting the space between pairs of letters...
, all caps (short for "all capitals" or "all capitalized") refers to text or a font
Typeface
In typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....
in which all letters are capital letters. All caps is usually used for emphasis. It is commonly seen in the titles on book covers, in advertisements
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
and in newspaper headlines. Short strings of words in capital letters appear bolder and "louder" than mixed case, and this is sometimes referred to as "shouting".
All caps can also be used to indicate that a given word is an acronym.
Studies have been conducted on the readability and legibility of all caps text. Some 20th century scientific testing indicates that all caps text is less legible and less readable than lower case text. Colin Wheildon stated that there is an "apparent consensus" that lower case text is more legible.
Print media
Before the development of lower case letters in the 8th century, texts in the Latin alphabetLatin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
were written in a single case, which is now considered to be capital letters. However, the shapes of words set in lowercase provide a valuable cue to readers that helps speed the process of reading; type in all caps forms a rectangular shape for every word, which makes distinguishing words harder. As a result, text in all caps is not widely used in body copy, as it is difficult to read in extended passages. The major exception to this is the so-called small print
Small Print
Small Print is the debut album by English singer Sam Wedgwood, released in 2006. The album was mastered at Little Tardis Studios and clearly illustrates Sam’s varied, extensive musical tastes and influences, combining a modern acoustic vibe with some funky jazz beats, some dance numbers and real...
in legal documents.
Capital letters have been widely used in printed headlines from the early days of newspapers until the 1950s. In the 1990s, more than three quarters of newspapers in the western world used lower case letters in headline text. Discussion regarding the use of all caps for headlines centers on the greater emphasis offered by all caps versus the greater legibility offered by lower case letters. Colin Wheildon conducted a scientific study with 224 readers who analyzed various headline styles and concluded that "Headlines set in capital letters are significantly less legible than those set in lower case."
Computing
All caps typography was common on early computers, such as certain early Apple II models and the ZX81, which had a limited support for lowercase text. This changed as full support of ASCIIASCII
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...
became standard, allowing lowercase characters.
With the advent of the internet, all caps in messages became closely identified with "shouting" or attention-seeking behaviour and is considered very rude. As a result, netiquette
Netiquette
Netiquette is a set of social conventions that facilitate interaction over networks, ranging from Usenet and mailing lists to blogs and forums. These rules were described in IETF RFC 1855. However, like many Internet phenomena, the concept and its application remain in a state of flux, and vary...
generally discourages the use of all caps when posting messages online. While all caps can be used as an alternative to bolding for a single word or phrase, to express emphasis, repeated use of all caps can be considered "shouting" or irritating.
In programming, writing in all caps (possibly with underscore
Underscore
The underscore [ _ ] is a character that originally appeared on the typewriter and was primarily used to underline words...
s replacing space
Space (punctuation)
In writing, a space is a blank area devoid of content, serving to separate words, letters, numbers, and punctuation. Conventions for interword and intersentence spaces vary among languages, and in some cases the spacing rules are quite complex....
s) is an identifier naming convention in many programming language
Programming language
A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....
s that symbolizes that the given identifier represents a constant.
Surnames
A practice exists (most commonly in FrancophoneFrancophone
The adjective francophone means French-speaking, typically as primary language, whether referring to individuals, groups, or places. Often, the word is used as a noun to describe a natively French-speaking person....
countries) of distinguishing the surname
Surname
A surname is a name added to a given name and is part of a personal name. In many cases, a surname is a family name. Many dictionaries define "surname" as a synonym of "family name"...
from the rest of a personal name
Personal name
A personal name is the proper name identifying an individual person, and today usually comprises a given name bestowed at birth or at a young age plus a surname. It is nearly universal for a human to have a name; except in rare cases, for example feral children growing up in isolation, or infants...
by stylizing the surname only in all caps. This practice is also common among Japanese, when they spell their names in roman letters.
Readability
Miles TinkerMiles Tinker
Miles Albert Tinker is an American author. He is "an internationally recognized authority on legibility of print" who published the results of some of the most comprehensive studies on the legibility of print ever conducted....
, for his landmark work, Legibility of Print, performed scientific studies on the legibility and readability of all-capital print. His findings were as follows:
All-capital print greatly retards speed of reading in comparison with lower-case type. Also, most readers judge all capitals to be less legible. Faster reading of the lower-case print is due to the characteristic word forms furnished by this type. This permits reading by word units, while all capitals tend to be read letter by letter. Furthermore, since all-capital printing takes at least one-third more space than lower case, more fixation pauses are required for reading the same amount of material. The use of all capitals should be dispensed with in every printing situation.
According to Tinker, “As early as 1914, Starch reported that material set in Roman lower case was read somewhat faster than similar material printed in all capitals.” Another study in 1928 showed that “all-capital text was read 11.8 per cent slower than lower case, or approximately 38 words per minute slower,” and that “nine tenths of adult readers consider lower case more legible than all capitals.”
A 1955 study by Miles Tinker showed that “all-capital text retarded speed of reading from 9.5 to 19.0 per cent for the 5 and 10 minute time limits, and 13.9 per cent for the whole 20 minute period.” Tinker concluded that, “Obviously, all-capital printing slows reading to a marked degree in comparison with Roman lower case.”
Tinker provides the following explanations for why all capital printing is more difficult to read:
Text in all capitals covers about 35 per cent more printing surface than the same material set in lower case. This would tend to increase the reading time. When this is combined with the difficulty in reading words in all-capital letters as units, the hindrance to rapid reading becomes marked. In the eye-movement study by Tinker and Patterson, the principal difference in oculomotor patterns between lower case and all capitals was the very large increase in number of fixation pauses for reading the all-capital print.
All caps text should be eliminated from most forms of composition, according to Tinker: “Considering the evidence that all-capital printing retards speed of reading to a striking degree in comparison with lower case and is not liked by readers, it would seem wise to eliminate such printing whenever rapid reading and consumer (reader) views are of importance. Examples of this would include any continuous reading material, posters, bus cards, billboards, magazine advertising copy, headings in books, business forms and records, titles of articles, books and book chapters, and newspaper headlines.”
Colin Wheildon stated that there is an "apparent consensus" that lower case text is more legible, but that some editors continue to use all caps in text regardless. In his studies of all caps in headline
Headline
The headline is the text at the top of a newspaper article, indicating the nature of the article below it.It is sometimes termed a news hed, a deliberate misspelling that dates from production flow during hot type days, to notify the composing room that a written note from an editor concerned a...
s, he states that, "Editors who favor capitals claim that they give greater emphasis. Those who prefer lower case claim their preferences gives greater legibility." Wheildon, who informs us that "When a person reads a line of type, the eye recognizes letters by the shapes of their upper halves," asserts that recognizing words in all caps "becomes a task instead of a natural process." His conclusions, based on scientific testing in 1982–1990, are: "Headlines set in capital letters are significantly less legibile than those set in lower case."
John Ryder, in the Case for Legibility, stated that "Printing with capital letters can be done sufficiently well to arouse interest and, with short lines, reading at a slowed speed is possible – but in principle too many factors of low legibility are involved."
Other critics are of the opinion that all caps letters in text are often "too tightly packed against each other".
In CSS
All caps can be specified in CSSCSS
-Computing:*Cascading Style Sheets, a language used to describe the style of document presentations in web development*Central Structure Store in the PHIGS 3D API*Closed source software, software that is not distributed with source code...
using "text-transform: uppercase;". For example, the HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
Jane Doe
renders as
- Jane Doe
In many cases, this is better than typing text directly in capitals, because one can easily change text style—such as replacing all caps with bold or a colored font—if deemed necessary.
See also
- Caps lockCaps lockCaps lock is a key on many computer keyboards. Pressing it sets an input mode in which typed letters are uppercase by default. The keyboard remains in caps lock mode until the key is pressed again...
- CamelCaseCamelCaseCamelCase , also known as medial capitals, is the practice of writing compound words or phrases in which the elements are joined without spaces, with each element's initial letter capitalized within the compound and the first letter either upper or lower case—as in "LaBelle", "BackColor",...
- Letter caseLetter caseIn orthography and typography, letter case is the distinction between the larger majuscule and smaller minuscule letters...
- Roman square capitalsRoman square capitalsRoman square capitals, also called capitalis monumentalis, inscriptional capitals, elegant capitals and quadrata, are an ancient Roman form of writing, and the basis for modern capital letters....
- Shift keyShift keyThe shift key is a modifier key on a keyboard, used to type capital letters and other alternate "upper" characters. There are typically two shift keys, on the left and right sides of the row below the home row...
- Small capsSmall capsIn typography, small capitals are uppercase characters set at the same height and weight as surrounding lowercase letters or text figures...
- UnicaseUnicaseA unicase or unicameral alphabet is one that has no case for its letters. Tamil, Arabic, Old Hungarian, Hebrew, Georgian and Hangul are unicase alphabets, while Latin, Greek, Cyrillic and Armenian have two cases for each letter, e.g., B/b, Β/β, Б/б,...