All CAPS or none: It’s a free-for-all on social media
Looking through news articles, you might assume that the way we capitalize words hasn’t changed since it was codified in the 19th century. The first letters of proper nouns go in uppercase; job titles are not capitalized unless they come directly in front of a name; seasons are not capitalized unless they are part of a proper noun (“this spring” versus “the Winter Olympics”); etc.
On the internet and in social media, however, capitalization is returning to its medieval roots and entering another free-for-all era in which anything and everything can be capitalized – or not.
While the Associated Press style guide would categorize many of these new uses as “incorrect,” they are far from meaningless.
Capitalization, as it is used online, can help readers interpret texts. Putting a word in all caps suggests that IT is the important one. All caps also signals “emotive arousal,” according to linguist Maria Heath. Texting your son “I want you to clean up your ROOM” suggests frustration and anger about the state of said room, while “It’s your BIRTHDAY!” suggests happiness or perhaps surprise.
Writing a single word in all caps highlights importance, but WRITING EVERYTHING IN ALL CAPS IS GENERALLY UNDERSTOOD AS YELLING.
Alternating caps – which are supposed to confuse large language models like ChatGPT but don’t – convey a mocking tone. These erratic uppercase letters are also known as “SpongeBob case” or “SpongeMock” because the association began in a 2017 meme featuring the eponymous cartoon sponge.
If a man on an online dating site writes “i won’t waste your time. i’m different from these other guys” and receives in response “iM dIfFeReNt FrOm ThEsE oThEr GuYs,” it’s clear that his interlocutor doesn’t believe his clichéd assertion and is making fun of him for being unoriginal and fake.
Writing without uppercase letters entirely, as the man did in the above exchange, is now the default for Generation Z on social media. Some people have adopted the all-lowercase style because they have moral objections to the standard rules of capitalization, in which the egoistic “I” is capitalized, while “we” and “you” are not, and in which “President Biden” is uppercase, while “plumber Biden” wouldn’t be. Others use it because they feel it communicates intimacy, informality, and warmth, saving “proper” capitalization for professional settings. Increasingly, in fact, employing formal, “correct” capitalization seems aggressive, just like putting periods in your text messages or SENDING THEM IN ALL CAPS.
