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Re:Why the First Laptop Had Such a Hard Time Catching On by lutusp on Friday October 12, 2012 @05:35AM (#4644346)
> Can anyone explain the capitals in this title? I'm guessing they are correct.

There's no "correct" outcome for an all-caps title, it's a stylistic choice. Neither right nor wrong. Another example of a stylistic choice is The Register's oft-exercised habit of emphasizing! a! title! like! this!.

> where can I read up on how you'd decide whether to hit shift or not - hoping that it isn't arbitrary.

Sorry, you can't read a rule on this practice, Because It Is Entirely Arbitrary.

Re:Why the First Laptop Had Such a Hard Time Catching On by hollerith on Friday October 12, 2012 @08:31AM (#4644700)
>Sorry, you can't read a rule on this practice, Because It Is Entirely Arbitrary.

Don't say that.

Since most newspapers and magazines are struggling to survive, maybe they don't do it any more, but for decades they made all their publications conform to style guides which were often as lengthy as books. Other organizations and communities of writers also used style guides. Three famous style guides:

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Dictionary_of_Modern_English_... a.k.a. Fowler's; and

(2) A Chicago Manual of style (which might have been limited mainly to academic writing; do not remember); and

(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style a.k.a. Strunk and White.

Also the New York Times maintained their own style guide, which I seem to recall was also sold to the general public. The whole point of these guides was to make written English more consistent.

As to the specific question of capitalization style, there is one very dominant style: namely, articles ("the", "a" and "an"), prepositions and conjunctions ("and", "or", "but" and maybe one more I cannot remember right now) are not capitalized, but everything else is.

Re:Why the First Laptop Had Such a Hard Time Catching On by lutusp on Friday October 12, 2012 @03:35PM (#4646494)
> for decades they made all their publications conform to style guides ...

Of course I know that, in fact my AP Style Guide is within arm's reach, and I regularly use Strunk & White as a source for a particular style position, but (apart from "make every word count") these references don't apply to online text, the present topic. Online style isn't print style -- the former isn't formalized to the degree that print style is.

I will know when there's a formal online style, widely accepted, because the first principle will be "no more gray text on a gray background!" I won't hold my breath.

Re:Why the First Laptop Had Such a Hard Time Catching On by toyg on Friday October 12, 2012 @05:46AM (#4644368)
I thought El Reg did that only for Yahoo! or other silly exclamation-mark-including brands...?

Not that I read it much, of late -- could never stand Orlowski, and recently the site has been defined as "the Daily Mail of Tech", so it's not like I have much of an incentive...

Re:Why the First Laptop Had Such a Hard Time Catching On by lutusp on Friday October 12, 2012 @06:06AM (#4644409)
> I thought El Reg did that only for Yahoo! or other silly exclamation-mark-including brands

I confess I never noticed the contexts, only that they existed. They're common enough that I suspect there's a macro at the ready in the El Reg editing apps: text =~ s/(\w+)/$1!/g

> Not that I read it much, of late ...

Same here -- the stylistic memes begin to wear on one.

Re:Why the First Laptop Had Such a Hard Time Catching On by vidarh on Friday October 12, 2012 @08:56AM (#4644775)
Yes, it's pretty much reserved for Yahoo!
Re:Why the First Laptop Had Such a Hard Time Catching On by StavrosK on Friday October 12, 2012 @05:45AM (#4644367)
Re:Why the First Laptop Had Such a Hard Time Catching On by darklajid on Friday October 12, 2012 @05:53AM (#4644387)
Screams for a quotation of Terry Pratchet's 'multiple exclamation marks' statement to me..
Re:Why the First Laptop Had Such a Hard Time Catching On by jff on Friday October 12, 2012 @11:34AM (#4645451)
They do that to mock Yahoo!'s name, as it thoroughly deserves to be mocked. Same way any story about Facebook will have a sub-title ending in ", bitch" as a reference to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/06/facebook-ceo-mark-z...
Re:Why the First Laptop Had Such a Hard Time Catching On by darklajid on Friday October 12, 2012 @05:51AM (#4644384)
Thanks a lot. For me these are stumble blocks (trained to pay attention to caps for too long) and carry meaning, so .. I tried to find a pattern. And failed.
Re:Why the First Laptop Had Such a Hard Time Catching On by eru on Friday October 12, 2012 @09:38AM (#4644947)
The title isn't all caps.
Re:Why the First Laptop Had Such a Hard Time Catching On by Rynant on Friday October 12, 2012 @10:24AM (#4645138)
Only the indefinite articles are not capitalized.
Re:Why the First Laptop Had Such a Hard Time Catching On by andreasvc on Friday October 12, 2012 @12:08PM (#4645628)
All caps is when all letters are capital, not just the first letter of each word. The latter style is called title case.