One way to stay young forever: turn off auto-caps, type in lowercase
Morgan Rae Playle was 27 when she crossed the threshold into adulthood. She started texting with uppercase letters.
Just like getting a driver’s license or going off to college, turning on auto-capitalization for text messages has become a milestone of adulting. Even smartphone natives who have been thumb-typing since diapers know that true adults start sentences with capital letters, and that names and other proper nouns deserve the same.
The question for many 20-somethings now is: When will society expect me to adhere to the laws of grammar?
Some realize it’s time to turn on auto-capitalization when they begin texting with bosses and colleagues for work, given lowercase letters can be susceptible to misinterpretation. This is especially the case when communicating with older generations who didn’t grow up DMing their BFFs.
But shunning the Shift key helps others cling to their youth.
To them, a lowercase letter isn’t just a lowercase letter. Instead, it’s a way to forever remain cool and casual in texts. Even some CEOs do it.
Lexicographers agree. They say lowercase typing isn’t laziness. It actually takes effort, since auto-capitalization is generally on by default. Like emojis and exclamation points , this is one of the many ways in which people try to get their humanness to shine through cold technical interfaces.
Morgan typed in lowercase throughout her 20s, feeling it gave off a kind of carefree mimosa-brunch vibe. In her previous role as social-media strategist, she occasionally tweeted in lowercase.
She started a new job last November in Dallas where she works on events and coordinates with clients and vendors. She didn’t want them to see messages in all lowercase and think an intern was texting them. So she turned on auto capitalization.
Capital letters are more sophisticated and buttoned-up—attributes she thinks are important to convey as she develops in the new role. The shift away from all lowercase might seem minor or silly to some people, but it’s significant for Morgan. It represents a decade of her life that’s now over. “I’ve grown out of the all-lowercase era,” she says. silly or friendly?
EmilieMosner,an18-year-old high-school senior in Lancaster, Pa., turned off auto-capitalization on her phone when she hit ninth grade and joined her school’s swarm of Snapchatters.
As she started applying to part-time jobs and talking to college recruiters a year ago, she decided it was time to turn capitalization back on. A few friends immediately asked why her tone became so formal. When Emilie explained her motivation, they too realized they’d soon be ditching the lowercase life. “I just feel like it would be silly because I’m trying to look presentable,” she says. “We’re going into the next phases of our life.”
Some people might consider writing in all lowercase letters to be slacking. But it shouldn’t be interpreted that way, says Grant Barrett , head of lexicography at Dictionary.com. It’s meant to signal familiarity.
Much like using italics, writing in all lowercase is a way to recreate spoken language, he says. “There’s always something else happening there, and usually the message is something important like, ‘I see you as a friend that I can be informal with .’” The poet E. E. Cummings famous ly wrote in lowercase. These days, popular young performers such as Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish have lowercase song titles. Spotify jumped on the bandwagon with playlists labeled “teen beats” and “my life is a movie.” never grow up
Caitlin Kurzman , a graduate student studying digital social media at University of Southern California in Los Angeles, generally uses only lowercase with her friends. She sees it as a more relaxed, low-pressure way of texting.
The 23-year-old likes to think she’ll never turn on auto-capitalization, even after she graduates and gets a demanding job. “Honestly, I don’t want to,” she says. “I like the informality.”
But Caitlin says she can’t always avoid uppercase—particularly in email. She has to remember to use the Shift key when responding to professors.
Many millennial adults, well into their 30s, refuse to use capitalization. Sam Altman , chief executive of OpenAI, is known for mostly tweeting in lowercase . His capital-letter avoidance hasn’t prevented him from running one of the most powerful companies in the world.
Drew Coffman , a 35-year-old social-media strategist in Los Angeles, stopped using proper capitalization around 2021. During the pandemic, people quarantined at home and gravitated toward being online. Drew realized he didn’t have to be so proper anymore, he says. He felt that capitalizing his tweets made them seem too formal, more like LinkedIn posts. “It just became clear there were a lot of benefits in being a human being online and not trying to be overly polished,” he says.©