Capital Offence - Emphasis

Capital Offence Capital Offence In our latest tips e-bulletin, we covered the ever-sticky topic of e-rage: that near-universal condition whereby one is brought to a state of apoplexy by the particulars of an arrangement of pixels in ones inbox. The question of email etiquette can be a tricky one, with an almost endless list of personal bugbears. The message may be too long, too short, poorly spelled, too chatty, overly formal; it could be heavy with jargon or decorated with emoticons; it could have been forwarded ad nauseum, or else carry no clue to the messages history whatsoever. However, the one thing that carries the greatest consensus as an e-no-no is: USING ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. Apparently this practice can lose you more than just friends at the water cooler it can lose you your job. An accountant in Auckland was fired for sending an email to her associates advising them on how to fill in claim forms. She stands accused by her former employers of spreading disharmony among the staff. Not, presumably, for providing guidance on the most efficient way for them to supplement their salaries, but for doing so in bold, in red and of course in CAPITAL LETTERS. No doubt this woman was merely trying to emphasise what she saw as crucial information. She has since been rewarded compensation for unfair dismissal, and one might be forgiven for calling her former colleagues ungrateful. But it leaves one message abundantly clear: we HATE capitals. Why? Opinions vary. The biggest one is the sense of being SHOUTED AT. Wading through our daily barrage of emails can be trying enough, without such an ocular pummelling. Using all capital letters is heavy on the eye, as the lack of differentiation in height and shape (as seen in lowercase) makes blocks of such text harder to read. It can also smack of laziness, even ignorance, on the part of the writer in a similar way to using all lowercase (know what i mean?). Perhaps the perpetrators colleagues took offence at her refusal to work with the shift key.