DO ALL CAPS HURT COMPREHENSION?

If you want to get your point across in an email or through text it might be best to write it out normally rather than resort to all caps.

A new study has found that writing in all caps does not improve reader comprehension at all, and in some cases, may actually make the text more difficult to understand.

All caps are a common feature in contracts, where it is believed that a paragraph written entirely in caps will improve its readability as well as the perception of its importance. Many contracts consumers sign today — including the Spotify Terms and Conditions and Facebook Terms of Service — feature sentences or paragraphs written entirely in capital letters.

“Our findings suggest the practical failure of all caps in legal texts,” researchers Yonathan Arbel and Andrew Toler wrote in their article. “There is no evidence that all caps improve over normal text and, with some caveats, there is some suggestion that they harm older readers.”

Researchers aren't quite sure why it is more difficult to understand all caps than sentence case, however, some studies indicate that when we are reading we rely on the shape of a word to help identify it. Words written in lower case have more unique shapes and are easier to tell apart. CAPITAL LETTERS have little to no variation in height or depth, making them more difficult to identify.

The use of all caps might have been an important tool before typed text was widespread. Forcing people to write in capital or block letters (think of the government forms you have to fill out) would break up cursive writing, making things easier to read.

In certain situations, all caps can also increase the emotion conveyed by a message. For example, participants rated the phrase “IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!!!” as happier than the phrase “It's my birthday!!!” But they didn't rate the phrase “I MISS U” as sadder than the phrase “I miss u,” according to Gretchen McCulloch on WIRED (all caps theirs).

Not everyone believes that uppercase letters are inherently more difficult to read. In 2004, Kevin Larson, a psychologist working with the Microsoft team responsible for fonts like Verdana, Calibri, and Comic Sans, noted that comprehension of any letters is just a matter of practice. We understand sentence case more readily than all caps simply because we are exposed to it more often. Consistently reading phrases written in all capital letters would, in time, improve our ability to comprehend what we are reading.

Whether you think that all caps mean you are yelling, excited, or maybe being just a bit rude, it's important to remember that many legal documents currently use capital letters to denote a clause that is particularly important. Take time to read whatever it is you sign or agree to and consult a lawyer if you have any questions if the stakes are high.

You may also want to go back and read the Terms of Service for all those apps and website you use regularly — caps and all.