UPPERCASE - Usage

Usage

In scripts with a case distinction, lower case is generally used for the majority of text; capitals are used for capitalisation, acronyms, medial capitals, and emphasis (in some languages).

Capitalisation is the writing of a word with its first letter in uppercase and the remaining letters in lowercase. Capitalization rules vary by language (e.g. capitalisation in English) and are often quite complex, but in most modern languages that have capitalisation, the first letter of every sentence is capitalised, as are all proper nouns. Some languages, such as German, capitalise the first letter of all nouns; this was previously common in English as well. (See the article on capitalisation for a detailed list of norms.)

In English, a variety of case styles are used in various circumstances:

• Capitalisation in English, in terms of the general orthographic rules independent of context (e.g., title vs heading vs text), is universally standardized for formal writing. For example, it is universal to begin a sentence with a cap, and to cap proper nouns, wherever formal orthography is in force. (Informal communication, such as texting, IM, or a handwritten sticky note, may not bother, of course; but that is because its users usually do not expect it to be formal.)
  • Sentence case: The most common in English prose. Generally equivalent to the baseline universal standard of formal English orthography mentioned above; that is, only the first word is capitalised, except for proper nouns and other words which are generally capitalised by a more specific rule.
  • Title Case: All words are capitalised except for certain subsets defined by rules that are not universally standardised. The standardisation is only at the level of house styles and individual style manuals. (See further explanation below at Headings and publication titles.)
  • ALL CAPS: Only capital letters are used. Capital letters were sometimes used for typographical emphasis in text made on a typewriter. However, long spans of Latin-alphabet text in all upper-case are harder to read because of the absence of the ascenders and descenders found in lower-case letters, which can aid recognition. With the advent of the Internet, all-caps is more often used for emphasis; however, it is considered poor "netiquette" by some to type in all capitals, and said to be tantamount to shouting.
  • small caps: Capital letters are used which are the size of the lower-case "x". Slightly larger small caps can be used in a Mixed Case fashion. Used for acronyms, names, mathematical entities, computer commands in printed text, business or personal printed stationery letterheads, and other situations where a given phrase needs to be distinguished from the main text.
  • lowercase only: Sometimes used for artistic effect, such as in poetry. Also commonly seen in computer commands and SMS language, to avoid pressing the shift key in order to type quickly.

In some traditional forms of poetry, capitalisation has been conventionally used as a marker to indicate the beginning of a line of verse independent of any other grammatical feature.