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.
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