Post #26925 by hanford_lemoore on Sun, Mar 16, 2003 11:27 PM

Well, if one or two headlines feature all caps, it's no big deal. It's not that hard to read when it's used in a headline situation (I use all caps for headlines all over tikicentral.com).

However I think it becomes a problem when it's used in large bodies of text. Try reading a large paragraph of text in all caps, and it's actually more demanding on the eyes and the brain to make it through the paragraph. There's been several readability tests that have confirmed this (although I can't name one, offhand :wink: )

So, the rule is designed to keep away the eBay Effect. The eBay effect is this: a few people all caps to make their headline stand out over others. Then a few others see that and think their headlines are not standing out enough, so they do it too. Soon there's more, and then the listings are hard to read. Then people start adding streams of characters like !!!!!!!!! and >>>>>LOOK AT MY AUCTION