Why uppercasing every single word in topics became so popular?

brandneworld@feddit.de to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 82 points –

Is it used to make headlines/posts more catchy? Does it have any logical explanation?

What Is The Origin Of That?

39

That's just title capitalisation in English. 😅

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_case

In thinking OP may not be a native speaker or was massively failed by their educational system, i.e., American.

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"

Same for Spanish, barring any proper nouns

Of course, yes! The original title of I promessi sposi was "Renzo e Lucia", so capitalized proper nouns.

In French, it's only the first word and the first noun or verb (Le grand Sommeil). But almost nobody respects this rule anymore.

Yes, but how is that not a legitimate explanation. There's enough Americans on lemmy to see a few posts with English title capitalization.

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 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.

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.

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. 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.

"Why has uppercasing every single word in topics become so popular?"

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, my bad, I have 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 *confirmation! :)

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.

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.

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. Tis a plague.

Don't you mean "Why Uppercasing Every Single Word In Topics Became So Popular?"

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!