Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
No, I didn’t forget to run the spell checker before publishing that. I did it on purpose. You may be wondering what in the world that has to do with typing in all caps. Well…
Upper and Lower Cases
Before we can discuss why you shouldn’t type in all caps, we must define upper and lower case letters. Other names for upper and lower cases are capital letters or majuscules, and minuscule (please don’t say miniscule!).
Traditionally, manual type setters placed the capital letters on the top shelf of their type trays for storage because they were used less often. The minuscule letters were stored on the lower shelves because these were used so much more and the lower shelves were much easier to get to. The original development by Alcuin of these two types of letters made it easier for the human eye to recognize the beginnings of sentences and proper nouns (names, places).
Ascenders and Descenders
Remember that we talked about the x-height last time? Ascenders are the parts of lowercase letters that rise above (ascend) the x-height. Examples of letters that have ascenders are l, h, b and f. Descenders on the other hand, go the opposite way; they fall below (descend) the baseline. Some letters with descenders are p, q, g and y.
HAVE YOU EVER KNOWN SOMEONE WHO TYPES IN ALL CAPS? IT’S ANNOYING AND HARD TO READ, ISN’T IT? KNOW WHY?
Apart from it being considered yelling in the digital world, capital letters have no ascenders or descenders. Ascenders and descenders help us recognize word shapes, instead of needing to identify each individual letter. This speeds up reading incredibly. Using a serif font also speeds up this shape recognition because they help us see the shapes more easily by almost connecting the letters.
Go back up to the top of this article and read the email reproduction with the mixed up letters again.
It wasn’t too difficult to understand that message, was it? They say it’s because we see the “word as a whole;” we see the shape of the word, not its individual letters. Would it be the same if the message were in all caps?
AOCCDRNIG TO RSCHEEARCH AT CMABRIGDE UINERVTISY, IT DEOSN’T MTTAER IN WAHT OREDR THE LTTEERS IN A WROD ARE, THE OLNY IPRMOATNT TIHNG IS TAHT THE FRIST AND LSAT LTTEER BE AT THE RGHIT PCLAE.
Much more difficult, isn’t it?
Remember, There’s More!
In the next few installments at Creative Curio, we’ll be discussing choosing the perfect typeface, adjusting type and fonts that every good designer should have in his or her arsenal of creativity (last time, we talked about serifs, baselines and x-height if you want to check it out). Subscribe to the Creative Curio feed and never miss another article!
Technorati Tags: Graphic Design, Typography, Uppercase, Ascender, Descender
Another enjoyable and informative read. The ALL CAPS section got me to thinking of the designer and typographer Helmut Schmid, who almost never uses caps; in fact, his most recent book, design is attitude is written entirely in lower-case. An interesting approach.
The whole capitalization thing is a relatively recent phenomenon. Perhaps we could do without them, however. Other writing systems like Japanese don’t have the equivalent of cap’s. In fact, they don’t even need spaces between words!
One good example of the use of all-caps was in John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meaney, where the protagonist’s dialogue is written entirely in cap’s, to emphasise his bizarre-sounding voice.
So how has it been designing good typography in Japanese? I imagine it’s quite different than when doing it for English. Are there so many different typefaces to choose from?
You reminded me of ee cummings and all his funny poems. He liked to write mostly in lowercase, but he capitalized weird words and use punctuation unusually.
Those first few lines totally tripped me out. I didn’t even have to hesitate as I read them and I understood it perfectly.
I almost thought you made a mistake with that book title, but I see now. You reminded me of ee cummings and all his funny poems.
The whole capitalization thing is a relatively recent phenomenon. Perhaps we could do without them, however.
It’s funny how easy it was to read the first few lines. As someone who receives more emails than a human should have to endure every day I now finally understand why emails written in all caps annoy me so much.
I feel much better knowing this
John