All caps, all shouting

RECENTLY THE GUY who lives in the White House sent out a tweet in all caps, threatening to not trust Russian translators and warning us to stay away from Canadians. Wait. What? Actually it was about Iran and how we'd wipe them off the face of the earth if they didn't stand for our national anthem at NFL games, or something like that.

I worked full-time in journalism for 24 years. My mother was an English teacher. So I know a bit about the language. To me, typing in all caps means you are full of bluster and you are lazy, or you didn't notice the "caps lock" button on your computer keyboard.

All caps is OK in certain instances. I got REALLY pissed off, as opposed to I got really PISSED off. See? It's the whole "less is more" thing, where strategic use makes it more effective.

This morning on our cemetery walk, Tucker and Genie chased a rabbit into a wooded area and disappeared for about 10 minutes, then came out wagging their tails like nothing had happened. "YOU MORONS!" I all-capped. "WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? DO IT AGAIN AND YOU'LL SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES THE LIKE THIS WORLD HAS NEVER SEEN!"

Tucker looked at Genie and said, "I think he's threatening to put us on leashes." They both rolled their eyes. And I realized how dumb I sounded and looked, which is PAR FOR THE COURSE.

A long time ago there was a Facebook page about Quincy history. There was a woman who typed in long and irrational comments in all caps. I ignored it until one day when I pointed out to her all caps was distracting and made it seem like she was shouting.

Geesh. You would have thought the world was ending. The woman started WEEPING and CRYING and accused me of BEING A BLULLY (her spelling. Really. You can't make it up).

A whole bunch of people started bashing me and apparently since she was blind it was the only way she could see the letters she was typing and the words she was misspelling. When it was pointed out that she could make the letters bigger on her computer (Ctrl + really works!), the outrage became insane. So I left the page.

You just can't win with people who use all caps, so don't even try. If they want to shout from their keyboards, let 'em. Proper English is a dying thing anyway, with BTW and LOL and WTH part of our everyday vocabulary today. WTF? Look - the guy who is shouting at Iran is a CLA (Capital Letter Abuser) and I am CLU (currently laughing uncontrollably).

Shout and All Cap away. I just won't read it.