ALL CAPS IS SHOUTING!!

To all of you who have been living under a rock for the past 15 years, let let you in on a little secret: TYPING IN ALL CAPS IS THE WRITTEN EQUIVALENT OF SHOUTING!

You may be thinking, “Avish, that is so obvious. Why are you wasting our time pointing this out?”

Sadly, I still see emails, tweets, and blog and forum comments around the internet where people will send the entire thing in all caps.

Why? Why? WHY OH WHY??

(See how on the last “why oh why” it seemed like I was shouting?)

Email has been around for a long time and, to underestimate it by quite a bit, email has been a primary form of human communication for at least ten years. Hasn’t the rule about not using all caps in emails been around since the dawn of time? (at last since the dawn of email time?) If not, isn’t it obvious to people when reading or composing their emails that all caps is a bit off-putting?

If it’s so obvious, why do people still do it? I have come up with five reasons a person may use ALL CAPS:

You are using some technology that only uses all caps

I don’t know, this seems like kind of a lame excuse. Does technology like this exist? A keyboard that lets you send emails but only allows you to use capital letters? And if so, are the emails you are sending from such a device so vital that you can’t wait a little bit until you can get in front of a real keyboard?

You are incapable of understanding how to use technology correctly

Some people, like brand new computer users, may not even realize that it is possible to use lower case letters. Or they may not know how. This excuse holds water for maybe the first day or two you are using a computer. If you can learn the technology well enough to send emails, then you can learn the tech well enough to not send annoying messages.

You are too lazy to use technology correctly

Now we are getting closer to the heart of it. Some people are too lazy to take the time to compose a properly formatted message. Hitting caps lock doesn’t seem all the hard to me, but I suppose for some people it’s a real chore. And I know some mobile devices are a pain to switch cases. In those situations, either use all lower case (at least you won’t be shouting) or again, as in reason 1, wait until you are at a real keyboard to send your email!

You think it will help add “emphasis”

Here’s the thought process: “Hmm, I want to make sure the recipient knows I am really serious about this point, so I’ll write the entire email to make them really notice.” Oh, they’ll notice. They’ll notice how annoying you are. A judiciously used all caps word in a normally written message can add emphasis. But when you CAPS the entire message you lose the ability to emphasize anything.

You really want to SHOUT!

Maybe you’re thinking, “but Avish, I know all caps is shouting. That’s why I used it! I was pissed and I wanted to let them know.” Ease up there, Rage-a-holic. Do you really think sending an angry, all caps email is going to resolve anything? Remember, email is just another form of communication. As such, you may want to take minute to think about whether your communication will get the response you want. If you want the other person to get pissed off, discount your opinion, and fire back with an angry message of their own, then all caps is the way to go! If, however, you prefer to be a rational adult human being, then realize that if you are at the point where you really want to shout at someone then a) you should take some time before replying (the ability to do this is one big advantage email has over other communication forms) and b) email is probably no longer the best form of communication to use. In either case, all caps will only make the situation worse.

There really isn’t a good reason to use all caps in written communication. Reasons 1-3 are just dumb. Reason 4 is just a misguided mistake. And if you are sing reason 5, and you really want to SHOUT at someone, take a step back, breathe, wait a little bit, and realize that there are much better and more powerful ways to get your communication across.

NOW IF YOU’LL EXCUSE ME, I HAVE TO GO COMPOSE SOME EMAILS…