this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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No Stupid Questions

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

What Is The Origin Of That?

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[โ€“] [email protected] 128 points 1 year ago (4 children)

That's just title capitalisation in English. ๐Ÿ˜…

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 119 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago
[โ€“] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)
[โ€“] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

Fucking communists.

[โ€“] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

A lot of newspapers don't do it anymore either.

It's still used for book titles, though.

[โ€“] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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"

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Same for Spanish, barring any proper nouns

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 53 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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?

[โ€“] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago

It's taught that way in the US as well.

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In the uk they just teach us about proper nouns

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Funny thing is, I'm Canadian, and proper nouns was all I was taught as well. "The, in, and, etc." look weird when they're capitalized and not also the start of a sentence.

[โ€“] [email protected] 47 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

and some people like to SHOUT, while others like to ScReAm

[โ€“] [email protected] 14 points 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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 16 points 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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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?

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

Source: I am german.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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! :)

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The keming on "conrmation" threw me for a loop haha

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

:facepalm: (Fixed)

I need to focus more when typing :)

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

tIME tO uSE aNTI tITLE cASE

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

This is somehow less jarring. Didn't expect that lol.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

ConJunCtion JuncTion What'S YUur FuncTion

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Short, common words like "in" aren't capitalised

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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!

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

You vs I is a possessive noun thing. I is possessive, you is not, so I gets capitalized, and you does not.