

Why Text in All Caps is Hard for Users to Read - UXMovement
http://uxmovement.com/design-articles/all-caps-hard-for-users-to-read

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aperiodic
This article presumes the word-shape model if reading, which most reading
psychologists believe to be inaccurate. The parallel-letter recognition
article has the most experimental support. This paper by a reading
psychologist at Microsoft
([http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ctfonts/wordrecognition....](http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ctfonts/wordrecognition.aspx))
has a good summary of the models and experimental evidence.

~~~
scott_s
This is an excellent overview of the evidence for the various models of
reading. It is far better than the parent article. Submit it on its own!

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edanm
I've been interested in the caps issue for a while. I'm a native Hebrew
speaker, and Hebrew doesn't have the idea of Capital letters - there is only
one set.

I wonder _why_ caps were even important. I mean, it's just another set of the
same letters, what's it for?

After a while, I did find some uses for it. Namely, when reading books, if you
come across a name you don't recognize (say, the name of a person), in Hebrew
you can't tell that it's a name; for all you know, it's a word that you don't
recognize and _not_ a name.

~~~
dochtman
In this context, the German use of caps is interesting. They capitalize every
noun, and I believe that such a use has been proven to allow for speedier
reading than the capital use in other Western languages (i.e. English).

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Gormo
It was common until the 19th century to capitalize all nouns in English as
well.

I've found in reading older text that it doesn't noticeably affect the speed
of comprehension, but the capitalization of nouns does seem to subtly shift
the emphasis away from the action being described by the sentence and toward
the things taking part in it.

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nhebb
All Caps is also hard to read because you spend your whole life reading
sentence case. Its what we've trained our brains to look at and interpret.

One plus for All Caps: it makes filtering piles of resumes easier. If it's
written in All Caps I toss it without reading.

~~~
trafficlight
You're doing yourself a disservice. As we all know, caps lock is cruise
control for cool. All you're doing is throwing out the resumes of A-listers.

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justinph
Sometimes it is OK to use all caps. This is pointed out in the article, but
worth noting again. You might want your text to read more as a shape. For
instance, when using section headers that you want to be more uniform in
appearance.

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petercooper
The _vertical_ edge shape contrast has also been noted to have an effect on
comprehension (as in ragged right vs full justification). A few
resources/papers:

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8535.1986....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8535.1986.tb00491.x/abstract)
[http://kaiweber.wordpress.com/2010/05/31/ragged-right-or-
jus...](http://kaiweber.wordpress.com/2010/05/31/ragged-right-or-justified-
alignment/)
[http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_...](http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED337749&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED337749)

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Tyrannosaurs
I remember learning about this at university.

The TL;DR version for those who don't want to bother with the links:

Full justification creates "rivers" of white space (effectively spaces above
and below that partially line up forming a white line snaking down part of the
page).

The eye has a tendency to follow these down the page which leads to either
skim reading (you just resume reading where the river stops) or having to go
back and reread and not get caught by the river this time.

Either obviously compromise the information you're taking in.

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keyle
I wonder though if this applies to languages like chinese or japanese. I know
nothing about them but I'm pretty sure CAPS don't get any bigger. Does that
make the language harder to comprehend?

I would have liked a more in-depth analysis personally.

~~~
harisenbon
How do you mean how this applies to languages like chinese and Japanese? Do
you mean that Japanese and Chinese have capital letter, or are you referring
to english letters written in all caps read by a native Japanese/Chinese
speaker?

In Japan(I don't know about china) it is very common for english words to be
written in all caps when surrounded by Japanese characters. they will also (in
many cases) be written in full-spaced letters, which only have capital
versions: ＡＢＣＤＥ vs ABCDE. I've never seen it cause a problem, but I think this
is more because Japanese speakers are not native english speakers, so their
hesitation with an unfamiliar script would outweigh any recognition delay from
it being written in all caps.

However, I do know that sentences that are written purely in katakana are much
slower for native speakers to read, as it's a script that is used much less
than kanji or hiragana. I would hesitate to say that reading an all-katakana
sentence is more troublesome for a native jp speaker than a native english
speaker reading something written in all caps.

~~~
spazmaster
Japanese is a language with three alphabets, theres not much room for
comparison when talking about All Caps. These three alphabets can all be used
in the same sentence. Readability for Japanese is a whole different science.
They have their own fonts, no all caps, characters comprised of 30 individual
strokes, top-to-bottom-right-to-left writing, but also horizontal reading.

One of the biggest readability issues for Japanese would be which characters
are used would be my guess. You need to know 2000 characters before you can
start reading the newspaper.

As an English person we can read every word, but might not know the meaning of
sparingly used words. In Japanese you might nit even be able to read it, or
you might even misread it. (characters can be read differently based on the
character next to it)

By the way Japanese don't encounter all katakana sentences, since it's just
used for the 'imported' words.

~~~
harisenbon
>By the way Japanese don't encounter all katakana sentences, since it's just
used for the 'imported' words.

As patio mentions, that's a common misconception. When computers were first
being developed for Japan, they used a half-width katakana font in order to
fit in a smaller byte-size, and also be able to be displayed on small screens
such as cash registers. This has carried over, and many appliances, printers,
atms, etc still use the half-width katakana for display. It is truly a pain in
the butt.

Sometimes all-katakana sentences are also used in books for when robots,
aliens or foreigners are talking in order to give the speech a halting or
"non-japanese" feel to it. I personally find it obnoxious, and like the Full
Metal Alchemist way of dealing with it, where they only changed the last
character of each line into katakana.

Katakana can also be used as english-speakers would use italics (or even all
caps) in order to put stress on a certain word in a sentence. かれのスタイルはサイコー！

>You need to know 2000 characters before you can start reading the newspaper.

Honestly, for foreigners this is considered a huge hurdle, but 2000 characters
is nothing. Especially for a native, who will have about 12~ years of learning
before they start reading newspapers, it's really not a big deal.

~~~
scott_s
_Especially for a native, who will have about 12~ years of learning before
they start reading newspapers, it's really not a big deal._

Assuming the 12 years of education happen! Consider that the amount of
education one needs to be literate in Japanese is more than the amount of
education it takes to be literate in, say, French, English or Spanish.

Note I'm not saying one is better than the other, just that they're different.

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ladeniran
The educational social systems we have train us to become better used to
reading words in sentence case. I'm yet to see a study on little kids
struggling to read in all caps before anything else. Give us something on this
before concluding...

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kingkawn
I remember reading a long time ago that teens read all caps more attentively
than regular text. not sure if its true though.

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luxative
HoPe pEoPle DoN't sTaRt WrItInG lIkE ThIs nOw

~~~
bbk
was going to write same thing. Contrast isn't everything.

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ny51bern
I use caps when I am trying to stress or emphasize a point. Sometimes caps are
easier to see on the eyes as well.

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adolfojp
i have no problem with all caps. what really annoys me is when people don't
use proper capitalization at the beginning of a sentence. what really makes me
angry is when people defend this style with the "e. e. cummings used to do it"
excuse. i can't parse paragraphs like these.

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bartl
I wonder why they're not saying anything about title case (Like the Title of
This Post). Man!

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c00p3r
It is just a bit harder to recognize words written in caps.

When we're reading, we aren't recognizing each character and then combining
them unconsciously into a word and then you comprehend it. We just recognize
the words at once, and stops on an unfamiliar or out of context ones, which
usually signals a misreading.

So, people are using caps when they need to EMPHASIZE something. ^_^

This article is trying to emphasize that the author cold understand things,
that the rest of the world cannot. ^_^

