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

What Is The Origin Of That?

  • Yoruio@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    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?

  • LuckyJones@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

      • Candelestine@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

  • blackbelt352@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • BadAdvice@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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?

    • milo128@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      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.

  • Crul@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • Lileath@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 year ago

      It is true. All nouns and of course the first word after beginning a new sentence are capitalised.

      Source: I am german.

      • Crul@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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! :)

  • Jackie's Fridge@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • o_oli@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • Izzy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I tend to do this without even thinking about it. I think it looks nice though.

    • Black_Gulaman@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      Costs me lots of lost time editing the body of my email because I instinctively do this capitalization thingy everywhere. Tis a plague.

  • Norgur@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    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!

  • Atemu@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Don’t you mean “Why Uppercasing Every Single Word In Topics Became So Popular?”