Years ago I worked as a writing tutor and answered students’ writing questions over email.  We were told to never write our comments in all caps because it came across as yelling at them.  This is important to remember when creating your marketing pieces.

I think this still applies – possibly even more so now with the use of instant messaging and other technologies where all caps really do come across as yelling. 

Not only do all caps scream at your customers, there is a more technical, graphic design/ psychology reason not to use them.  Turns out our brains don’t actually look at every letter when we’re reading a word.  We’re programmed to sorta identify the overall shape of the word, which is made up of overall shapes of letters.   The  problem with all caps is that each letter is now essentially the same shape - SQUARE or RECTANGLE and each word is also the same shape.  Our brains actually have to work harder to read text in all caps as we have to actually “READ” each letter.  For example, Brighton is easier to read than BRIGHTON.

While the occassional use of all caps for a heading or a few words here or there isn’t going to make someone’s head explode with extra effort, whole blocks of text in all caps are going to be significantly harder to read and your customers may not actually do so.  Or if they do, they may miss what you’re trying to tell them.

If you need to add emphasis to a piece, try italics, or bold or a different color or size.  Avoid underlining however.  Underlining has come to mean hyperlink to a lot of people.  Also - huge pet peave of mine here - if you are using a wordprocessing program to create a print piece and it automatically underlines and turns your web and email addresses blue – turn them back to normal before you print it.  Since the whole point of a blue underlined piece of text is that someone knows to click on it – that whole point is mute in print media.

How do you perceive all caps or underlined text?

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