STOP SHOUTING AT ME!

Let me add one more pet peeve to my running list of PR pet peeves -- PR folks who send out press releases with the SUBJECT LINE IN ALL CAPS.

I think all caps was the custom back in the day of, oh, I dunno... lead type, Western Union, and really primitive computers -- but we're in Web 2.0 land now, folks. All caps doesn't make your release look more important, it makes it look like spam. And I usually treat it as such.

I'm actually surprised that many of these releases make it through the spam filters (some don't) -- because I tend to associate all caps with 419 fraud, rather than legitimate press releases.

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One Comment

  1. Posted 5/11/2007 at 12:51 PM | Permalink

    Joe,

    here's one more reason why all caps are bad. Writing in all caps, as several studies have demonstrated, makes the text harder to read and understand: in other words, it is one of the most efficient ways to make people dislike what you wrote, without even realizing it. To know more, see:

    http://www.stcsig.org/usability/topics/readability.html:
    http://www.pacific.edu/web/style-guide/use-simple-style.asp
    http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/usability/textfontcss.html
    http://www.tomontheweb2.ca/CMX/4D5E2/
    http://hubel.sfasu.edu/courseinfo/SL03/email_study.htm

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