Submitted 10 months ago by brandneworld@feddit.de to [deleted]
Is it used to make headlines/posts more catchy? Does it have any logical explanation?
What Is The Origin Of That?
Here in Canada at least, I was taught in elementary school to capitalize all important words (i.e. other than and, or, at, in, etc.) in a title. Is it taught differently in other places?
It’s taught that way in the US as well.
In the uk they just teach us about proper nouns
Funny thing is, I’m Canadian, and proper nouns was all I was taught as well. “The, in, and, etc.” look weird when they’re capitalized and not also the start of a sentence.
It’s called Title Case. There are different rules depending on which style manual you’re using. Some people just capitalise everything. Some people don’t use it at all.
and some people like to SHOUT, while others like to ScReAm
In all fairness, alternating caps is read in an extremely different way. It mimics an undulating high-low pitch that is frequently used for mockery in English. Can also be represented with a tilde, usually in a friendlier manner.
You mean like how titling works? Like book titles and shit? Lmao I don’t see what else you could be asking. Did you think it was some modern trend or something instead of how literary works have been titled since forever?
its called no stupid questions mate, no need to be a dickhead about it. as other people have said op probably isnt a native speaker and lots of other languages don’t capitalize titles the way we usually do in english.
Well for me, I don’t care so much to the WHEN. What I want to learn is the WHY. I’m feeling it’ll be a deep rabbit hole.
It something that always has been. Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard An Almanack from 1739 uses title case. It was used in illuminated manuscripts written by monks
You’re asking something that probably comes from a wide array of reasons that dates back literal centuries, even millennia.
IPreferCamelCase
I was going to, but “I” is normally capitalized anywhere in a sentence.
i_prefer_snake_case
I hate it - whoever invented title case needs their head checked. It makes it far more difficult to read.
For short titles it’s fine which is probably the use to be fair, but when people on reddit/lemmy write a short essay as a ‘title’ man that is annoying.
tIME tO uSE aNTI tITLE cASE
This is somehow less jarring. Didn’t expect that lol.
I have read that it was influenced by German capitalization rules; all nouns are capitalized in German. But I never checked if that’s true.
It is true. All nouns and of course the first word after beginning a new sentence are capitalised.
Source: I am german.
Oh, I had indeed confirmed that all nouns are capitalized in German… what I meant is that I’m not sure if that’s the reason why English also does it (sometimes).
But thanks for the conrmation! :)
In print, you can use all-caps to produce a large, attention-grabbimg headline and reduce the leading (line space) without worrying about font ascenders or descenders interfering.
Online, it’s just shouting.
“Why has uppercasing every single word in topics become so popular?”
ConJunCtion JuncTion What’S YUur FuncTion
I tend to do this without even thinking about it. I think it looks nice though.
Costs me lots of lost time editing the body of my email because I instinctively do this capitalization thingy everywhere. This a plague.
See? That's what you get when you insist to write everything in lower case with weird exceptions (I is capitalized, you isn't, narcissists...) People make up even weirder exceptions. That's on you, sloppily simplistic english grammar!
You vs I is a possessive noun thing. I is possessive, you is not, so I gets capitalized, and you does not.
OddFed@feddit.de 10 months ago
That’s just title capitalisation in English. 😅
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_case
Klear@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Fucking capitalists.
Erk@cdda.social 10 months ago
Oh, you.
Letstakealook@lemm.ee 10 months ago
In thinking OP may not be a native speaker or was massively failed by their educational system, i.e., American.
Scrollone@feddit.it 10 months ago
OP is probably not English. Other languages have different rules.
For example, in Italian book titles only have the first word capitalized, e.g.: “I promessi sposi”
Canadian_Cabinet@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
Same for Spanish, barring any proper nouns
DRUMS_@reddthat.com 10 months ago
Yes, but how is that not a legitimate explanation. There’s enough Americans on lemmy to see a few posts with English title capitalization.
zloubida@lemmy.world 10 months ago
In French, it’s only the first word and the first noun or verb (Le grand Sommeil). But almost nobody respects this rule anymore.