Re:Uppestcase and Lowestcase Letters
by Sharlin on Friday April 02, 2021 @10:43AM
(#26671795)
Yeah, it's probably just you.
To me (and probably most others), license texts and such absolutely look like they are shouting. I do not understand whence the convention of having them in ALL CAPS, and can only assume it's in itself some sort of a cultural association between ALL CAPS and IMPORTANCE. I have only seen it in English legal texts, anyway – is it even used in other languages? It looks to me like ALL CAPS was originally used to emphasize key points, and then an inevitable race to the bottom happened until EVERYTHING WAS IMPORTANT which really means that nothing is important.
When it comes to typography, nearly every type of emphasis employed in Western text except italics (and sᴍᴀʟʟ ᴄᴀᴘs, which see too little use these days methinks) only exist due to technological limitations, particularly the extremely limited typographic options available to typewriters and, later, 7- or 8-bit text terminals. This includes ALL CAPS, s p a c i n g, and u͟n͟d͟e͟r͟l͟i͟n͟e͟d͟, never mind ASCII crutches like /pseudoitalics/, _pseudounderlined_, and ∗pseudoboldface∗.
To me (and probably most others), license texts and such absolutely look like they are shouting. I do not understand whence the convention of having them in ALL CAPS, and can only assume it's in itself some sort of a cultural association between ALL CAPS and IMPORTANCE. I have only seen it in English legal texts, anyway – is it even used in other languages? It looks to me like ALL CAPS was originally used to emphasize key points, and then an inevitable race to the bottom happened until EVERYTHING WAS IMPORTANT which really means that nothing is important.
When it comes to typography, nearly every type of emphasis employed in Western text except italics (and sᴍᴀʟʟ ᴄᴀᴘs, which see too little use these days methinks) only exist due to technological limitations, particularly the extremely limited typographic options available to typewriters and, later, 7- or 8-bit text terminals. This includes ALL CAPS, s p a c i n g, and u͟n͟d͟e͟r͟l͟i͟n͟e͟d͟, never mind ASCII crutches like /pseudoitalics/, _pseudounderlined_, and ∗pseudoboldface∗.