UPPERCASE=emphasis, not shouting

From: Micheal Palmer (mwpalmer@earthlink.net)
Date: Sat Mar 08 1997 - 22:49:47 EST


At 10:10 PM -0200 3/7/97, Isidoros wrote:

>I, till day before yesterday, when an astutely observant member,
>evidently wondering about some discrepancy between my words and
>the size of my lettering in challenging Mr. Kilmon's positions,
>wrote to me:
>
>>Isidoros
>>it just occured to me that you may be unaware of a convention
>>on the Net that capitols are used as "shouting" or angry statements
>>(and I've been asked myself not to "shout" at times as I was using
>>upper case for ease of reading one day when I had misplaced my
>>glasses.) I believe there is some misunderstanding here, and that
>>is part of the problem. When you wrote PROOF it was interpreted
>>as being rude.

I must say that I find the interpretation of UPPERCASE as shouting to be
puzzling. (Well, I don't guess I MUST, but I will :-) I have been a member
of several lists (two of which have more messages per day than b-greek) and
I have encountered this interpretation only here. I NEVER intend uppercase
to indicate shouting. I use it only for emphasis.

On one list which I finally dropped because I was receiving far too much
mail, shouting was indicated by multiple exclamation points (!!!!). When I
see uppercase I never take it to mean shouting unless the tone of the
message warrants that interpretation.

Because I have noticed that several b-greekers THINK that uppercase means
shouting, however, I have begun to include an explanatory comment like the
one below when I think there is potential for confusion.

[UPPERCASE = emphasis, not shouting]

When I think there is little chance of confusion (as in this message) I
just use uppercase for emphasis and don't worry about it.

I hope this helps. Er...maybe I should say that in Greek to make this
message legit? :-)

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Micheal W. Palmer
Religion & Philosophy
Meredith College

mwpalmer@earthlink.net
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