Switching to Lowercase Messaging: A Capital Idea (original) (raw)

NO NEED TO YELL: A Prosodic Analysis of Writing in All Caps

2021

Writing in all caps, while not unique to the internet, has become a common feature used in social media. English-speaking internet natives seem to have shared intuitions about what meaning it contributes to a text, even though it is not a feature taught in standard English orthographic education. This study employs production studies to determine how readers produce tweets written in all caps out loud, in order to provide evidence that there is a prosodic component to the interpretation of all caps. Though common discourse about all caps holds that it indicates yelling and anger, the data from this study shows that it's not just average loudness but also average pitch and syllable duration that tend to be increased in the production of all caps text versus text with standard capitalization. This combinaiton of prosodic features which can be associated with all caps also supports the conclusion that it can be used in contexts exemplifying a wide range of emotions, not just anger....

Shift of use of capital (upper case) letters in english and Latvian marketing texts

Eesti Rakenduslingvistika Uhingu Aastaraamat, 2007

This paper is largely observational. It discusses shifts in capitalization practices in marketing texts in Latvian. Two of the observed shifts are changes in accepted Latvian orthography (in Latvian texts) and one is an extension of Latvian changes into English texts written in Latvia. One of the Latvian shifts may be due to external influence and one is from internal sources. These changes are considered as matters of orthographic change, cultural change, the introduction of new (or previously little utilized) communication channels and tools and demonstration of the evolution of new communication rules. The paper provides some hypotheses about what may cause this and makes some observations about what this reflects about culture and language and how these are applied to other languages.

A sentence need not begin with a capital letter

Strani jezici, 2020

This paper examines the challenge of starting a sentence with a proper noun or an abbreviation that is written with an initial lowercase letter (e.g. iPhone, danah boyd, pH). Traditionally, placing such words at the beginning of a sentence would be avoided, but this limits one's syntax and style. Hence, the aim of this paper is to explore the rules and practices of writing certain proper nouns and abbreviations with a lowercase letter and starting a sentence with such words in Croatian and English. Therefore, we reviewed the rules and guidelines in orthography handbooks and style guides, analyzed the corpora to examine the use of the initial lowercase letter, and surveyed a group of 60 bilingual college students to gain an insight into what they find acceptable regarding the matter. The results show that a sentence can indeed begin with a lowercase letter and that the acceptability of this phenomenon depends on several factors.

Design Improvements for Frequently Misrecognized Letters

Information design journal, 2011

To understand how the design process works, the paper takes the outset in the work of one of the first innovating type designers: the English printer and typefounder John Baskerville (1706-1775). By comparing his way of working with a model for a contemporary design process, the paper reflects upon the relationship between this and the way Baskerville might have worked in the development of his historical typeface style.

Plain Language in the US Gains Momentum: 1940–2015

IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 2017

Research problem. Interest in plain-language communication has been growing in many sectors of business and government, but knowledge about its development is scattered and in need of synthesis. Research questions. How did plain language in the US evolve to gain acceptance by industry, government, and the public? In what ways have advocates changed their vision of plain language? Literature review. My review identified a corpus of more than 100 publications relevant to the history of plain language from 1940 to 2015. Methodology. I evaluated the literature on plain language to identify milestones, events, and trends between 1940 and 2015. I focused on the evolution of plain language and on ways that practitioners altered their perspective of the field. Results. Between 1940 and 1970, plain language focused mainly on readability. During the 1970s, some practitioners began to employ usability testing. By the mid-1980s, there was a widespread sense that plain-language advocates had shifted priorities from readability to usability. Between 1980 and 2000, advocates broadened their vision-beyond word-and sentence-level concerns to include discourse-level issues, information design, and accessibility. Between 2000 and 2015, advocates continued to worry over their old questions ("Can people understand and use the content?"), but also asked, "Will people believe the content? Do they trust the message?" By 2015, plain language had gained significant momentum in business, government, medicine, and education. Conclusions. Plain language evolved over the past 75 years from a sentence-based activity focused on readability of paper documents to a whole-text-based activity, emphasizing evidence-based principles of writing and visual design for paper, multimedia, and electronic artifacts. Plain-language practitioners expanded their concerns from how people understand the content-to the usability and accessibility of the content-to whether people trust the content. In addition to a narrative about the field's evolution, I offer a Timeline of Plain Language from 1940-2015, which chronicles the field's highlights. Together, the narrative and timeline offer a fairly comprehensive view of the current state of plain language and allow those with an interest to dig deeper.