Writing in all caps meaning psychology

WHEN YOU WRITE IN ALL CAPS IT SOUNDS LIKE YOU’RE SHOUTING.

Using capital letters to indicate strong feeling may be the most famous example of typographical tone of voice. But there are different kinds of strong feelings.

All capital letters shortcut key

Linguist Maria Heath asked a cross section of internet users to rate the difference in emotion between a message in all caps and the same message in standard capitalization. She found that all-cap styling made people judge happy messages as even happier: “IT’S MY BIRTHDAY!!!” feels happier than “It’s my birthday!!!” But it didn’t make sad messages any sadder: “i miss u” is just as pathetic as “I MISS U.” When it came to anger, the results were mixed: Sometimes caps increased the anger rating and sometimes they didn’t, a result which Heath attributed to the difference between “hot” anger (FIGHT ME) and “cold” anger (“fight me”).

A single capped word, on the other hand, is simply EMPHATIC.

Looking at examples of all-capped words on Twitter, Heath found that the most common single ones included NOT, ALL, YOU, and SO, as well as advertising words like WIN and FREE:

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