My post about CAPS

[fadedrose]

As a kid (1950) I was taught that quotation marks were used ONLY in quotations and magazine articles, etc., and that book titles were to be ALL in capital letters or underlined. (Upon reflection, the nuns did teach me a lot of stuff that wasn't true)

Typewriters did not have italics. They had an underscore key but it was cumbersome to backspace all through a title to underscore it, so CAPS were the easiest and quickest way to go. In written work in school, CAPS were also preferred being neater than hand underlining without a ruler....

DU's format doesn't allow formatting of thread titles other than quotation marks which I feel aren't quite right in a book titles. Emails don't have formatting options in the subject line.

When the computer came along, somebody decided that all CAPS was screaming probably because there were so few people using computers that they wanted to get their monies worth out of the italics and underscore keys. I personally don't like to read things printed in italics and dread reading more than a paragraph (I wonder if this is because italics in fiction are the crazy killer thinking).

College and University websites now all seem to approve of book titles with the first letter of words capped in combination with quotation marks. I feel uncomfortable with that because it's in direct opposition to what I was taught.

So bear with me and my book titles all in CAPS. Honest, I'm not screaming at you, and will use them until our Hosts tell me to stop...

The list that I typed in another thread took ages to look up and even longer to type and I'm putting this separate so that the list could be neat and and easy to read and use with none of my bs....

[MaineDem]

1. I've always felt uncomfortable putting book titles in quotes

To be honest, I never thought to put the titles in caps but that makes more sense to me.

(I had a nun tell us once we could get pregnant going horseback riding. Seriously!!! So not everything they told us was true, either.)

[fadedrose]

2. Actually, it's riding a bike that does it....

After 20 years of marriage, got my very first bike and at 39 got pregnant. We were poor.

The next time I started riding again was about 2 years later, got pregnant, then 2 years later, got back on the bike and got pregnant again.

Your nun was either lying or had no sexual experiences.

There are people who have screwed around with animals, tho.


You'd think she'd figure out there are too many people and not enough horses. Bikes, even poor nations are overpopulated and they all ride bikes....

[MaineDem]

3. So it's the bike riding!

I knew they had it wrong.

[Goblinmonger]

4. I thought of you when I saw the other thread.

And if I'm being honest, I still have a problem typing in all caps when the title of the book for the Fiction discussion group has no capitalization. Perhaps my lingering love of E. E. Cummings (and I've read plenty of articles about the capitalization of his name so have at it).

[fadedrose]

5. Never heard of 'em

So now you have at it

[fadedrose]

7. i looked up e. e. cummings

saw him in wikipedia and the only thing i can say is that he wears his hat the same way Sinatra did. maybe that's why he got famous. but goblin, why are we wispering? i don't think it's going to start a wordslide or avalanche of little teeny letters here in fict;ion....thank gawd for punctuation anyway.

but thank you. I like to learn new things because with my memory i don't remember so many of the old.

notice i started Sinatra with a cap. i don't mess with him. next to god, he's my fav....



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._E._Cummings

[fadedrose]

6. I think Caps only in subject line - forgot to mention

The caps go only in the subject line, not in the body of the letter, because formatting on the computer allows for it elsewhere but not here or in email.

I love formatting more than I love all Caps, and would gladly do it in the subject line if I only could (reminds me of a song, "If I Only Could" or maybe that's just one line from it).

[getting old in mke]

8. Conventions for font info in a non-fonted world

Conventional computer usage for the last 25 years or so has been that if a font or location did not allow for variations, then italic emphasis was done using underscores on either end, as in _The Chicago Manual of Style_, and bold emphasis was done with asterisks. *Pow! Wham!*

Underlining on a typewriter was shorthand for italics which is why book titles were underlined. Typesetting would have it in italics.

You can have some fun poking around at http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/CMS_FAQ/new/new_questions01.html looking at this and that that you never, ever really needed to know (well, probably).

[fadedrose]

9. I did spend some time at the Chicago site

but did not find any cooperation from them on "all caps in book titles." You say "25 years" ago, but I learned my way 60 years ago. Didn't even see a teevee set till I was 12, when a bunch of people lined up on sidewalks to see the teevee playing in a store window..

Most in agreement with the caps are in publishing - interoffice stuff, etc., in internet correspondence, where it's almost standard.

The underscore at each end is cumbersome to me, but thanks for the suggestion.

[getting old in mke]

10. Yeah

My typing class days weren't 60, but were 45 and things have definitely changed.

My comment was pretty much just a "history of computers and the net" where ways had to be found when there was just a green screen that couldn't do underlining, italics, bold, etc. So that from 25-30 years ago in that arena the "_" and "*" conventions have been common even until today--a lot of Wiki markup languages still use them. They were fairly common in email listserv discussions, news servers, and any text based browsers. Wasn't meant to be a comment on the way any non-virtual worlds (some might say real worlds) like publishing might use them.

Did a gig at UW-Madison prior to the advent of anything like graphical operating systems and helped develop software for doing computer typesetting and learned waaaaay more about it that was probably good for me. Although it did lead to writing a music typesetting program in the early 90s that was a lot of fun.

[fadedrose]

11. You make me feel kinda dumb...

You're technologically more advanced than me. I don't know anything about the programs you've been involved in....good for you...

Yes, they have changed. But an old dog...you know...

[getting old in mke]

12. Certainly not my intent

...just where I've chosen to (mis)spend my life. I forget sometimes that not everyone is as interested in techy history as me. It's the point where my wife says "That's nice dear. Could you please reach that bowl on the top shelf for me?" to put me back in my place

[SheilaT]

13. I was taught, back in the days

of typewriters, that the titles of books were underscored, and the titles of stories or magazine articles were in quotation marks.

Oh, and boy do I love spell check. I had two typo/misspellings in the above sentence and the little red underscore of them kept me from posting something that made me look totally ignorant.

And then I noticed another error and had to immediately fix it.

[fadedrose]

14. Blame misspellings on our quick minds

Our dumb fingers just can't keep up..or vice versa in my case.

The caps, from what I've looked up are used mostly by publishers to publishers and authors, etc., but I like the look of them.

When I go back to find a post I wrote, it's so easy to see.

My eyes, fingers, etc., are pretty much shot...

But it's posting with people like you who are smarter than me that makes me keep trying to make a post perfect. You should see them before I go to "preview."

I look like a bloody moron...