Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, we've got We've got some exciting news for
Speaker 1: you ridiculous historians. Noel, Max and Ben. We're doing a
Speaker 1: we're doing some classic episodes.
Speaker 2: Finally, what's this new piece of content in me feed?
Speaker 3: You may be asking yourself, possibly in all caps, texting
Speaker 3: angrily to a friend or acquaintance or colleague, what are
Speaker 3: these ridiculous history fellows up too?
Speaker 2: Well, it's good news for you, my friends, mm.
Speaker 1: Hmm, and for us as well. In celebration of April six,
Speaker 1: Drowsy Driver Awareness.
Speaker 2: Day, Yeah, Hostess.
Speaker 1: Twinkie Day, National Siamese Cat Day, and of course New
Speaker 1: Beers Eve, we're rolling out our classics on April six,
Speaker 1: nol I want to give a shout out to our
Speaker 1: friends Miles and Jack over at Daily Zeitgeist. They like
Speaker 1: to shout out national days celebrations.
Speaker 2: Just literally one like every day. Yeah calendar. It's so
Speaker 2: weird and they get pretty weird and dumb, and then
Speaker 2: dare we say ridiculous? Now?
Speaker 1: Now, for now we have been talking in terms of like,
Speaker 1: if you were reading an audio transcript ridiculous historians, you
Speaker 1: would see most of this in lowercase letters. But true story.
Speaker 1: Back in twenty eighteen, You and I and our fellow
Speaker 1: our fellow colleagues, we asked ourselves a question, when did
Speaker 1: all caps in type become the written version of yelling?
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's a good question, one that we attempt to answer.
Speaker 2: Dare we say succeed in answering in this episode? By
Speaker 2: the way, Ben, did you know that June first is
Speaker 2: National Text Day? We kind of missed the boat on
Speaker 2: that one. We're not very good at temple alignments, but
Speaker 2: just thought I throw that out. There's death for everything.
Speaker 4: Also, guys, I just want to kind of jump in here.
Speaker 2: You jumping in? Yeah? I can? I just say real quick? Max.
Speaker 2: We need to make a T shirt that says, I
Speaker 2: just can I just jump in here real quick. It's
Speaker 2: it's like a catch phrase. I love it. I'm here
Speaker 2: for I'm just saying, but sorry, Matt, please jump in
Speaker 2: by all means jump.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm jumping in to say that April sixth is
Speaker 4: my birthday.
Speaker 2: Jump jump all right? The Max, the Max Daddy makes.
Speaker 4: You just kidding, is not my birthday, but it is
Speaker 4: coming up.
Speaker 2: The Daddy Max will make you jump jump ridiculous history
Speaker 2: will make you jump. Gosh, we're roll roll the beautiful
Speaker 2: bean footage. Here we go.
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio Hello or Should
Speaker 1: I Say Hello? Or Should I Say You could hear
Speaker 1: the regular letters, the capitol letters, and possibly the italics.
Speaker 2: My name is Ben, My name is Nolan, Ben. Why
Speaker 2: are you shouting at me?
Speaker 1: Oh? I'm shouting at our fellow friends and neighbors and listeners.
Speaker 1: And we prepped our super producer, Casey Pegram because we
Speaker 1: wanted him to know that someone was going to raise
Speaker 1: their voice.
Speaker 2: I do have to say, Ben, that was the most
Speaker 2: low grade shout that I've ever heard. That was a
Speaker 2: very gentle morning shout, and I appreciate that because it is,
Speaker 2: after all nine am as we record this episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, hopefully we could get the point across, though, Nol.
Speaker 1: Have you ever been in a moment, my old friend,
Speaker 1: where you feel like you could picture what someone is
Speaker 1: saying to you as though it were written down in text.
Speaker 2: Sort of in like a comic bookie automatopoia kind of way. Yeah, sure, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like somebody, somebody says something with a certain amount of
Speaker 1: emphasis or shade, and you can picture the italics when
Speaker 1: they say, oh that one.
Speaker 2: See. It's interesting that you flip it in that direction,
Speaker 2: because when you look at it like that, yes, I
Speaker 2: can get that tone, and I can picture a text
Speaker 2: version of it. But when you flip the script and
Speaker 2: look at the text only version, it is sometimes a
Speaker 2: little tricky to get that nuance tone. Which is why
Speaker 2: the fact that today people communicate more in the written
Speaker 2: language than ever before is an interesting conundrum because a
Speaker 2: lot is lost in translation, a lot of that tone
Speaker 2: and nuance flies right out the window, and we get
Speaker 2: a lot of cranky people that think that you're mad
Speaker 2: at them when you send them a text without any
Speaker 2: kind of signifiers of levity, right.
Speaker 1: Right, And there's such a question that occurs because our
Speaker 1: punctuation system is still evolving to properly convey tone. You've
Speaker 1: heard of different attempts to, let's say, revise or clarify punctuation,
Speaker 1: like the famous in Terra bang, which is a question
Speaker 1: mark that is also an exclamation mark.
Speaker 2: I love that word.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's a word that could meet a lot of things,
Speaker 1: and for our purposes, it describes this new attempt at punctuation.
Speaker 1: And this all exists because it's so very easy to
Speaker 1: misread text. You'll also hear the statistic that sometimes you'll
Speaker 1: hear ninety percent, sometimes you'll hear seventy percent, or anywhere
Speaker 1: in that ballpark, just as the majority of information conveyed
Speaker 1: when you're talking to another person in person is actually
Speaker 1: not verbal. And that's the reason why if you look
Speaker 1: at a transcript of any conversation you have with any
Speaker 1: of your friends or strangers on the street, you'll find
Speaker 1: that the conversation itself doesn't make much sense. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of ellipses, there are a few coherent sentences.
Speaker 1: So when we are limited to a single form of communication,
Speaker 1: a text only interface, we have to think very carefully
Speaker 1: about what we say and how we type it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was talking about like little signifiers of levity,
Speaker 2: Like some people depend on the exclamation marks. Some people
Speaker 2: absolutely despise the exclamation mark. I am one that uses
Speaker 2: it to show that I'm excited about something, and there
Speaker 2: are some people that I think get it and some
Speaker 2: people that it bugs the hell out of, like my girlfriend,
Speaker 2: So I do not text her exclamation marks anymore. But
Speaker 2: you know, there's emojis obviously you can use to show
Speaker 2: that you're telling a joke or that you're, you know,
Speaker 2: being light about something. But the all powerful shouty caps
Speaker 2: is what today's episode is about. And it turns out
Speaker 2: that it's got a history that goes way farther back
Speaker 2: than just early Internet message boards and newsgroups, right, Ben, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely no, because we're all familiar with an Internet forum
Speaker 1: where you see one person writing in all caps to
Speaker 1: emphasize something, sometimes without an exclamation wark just very very loud,
Speaker 1: and we have all seen these comments online before. Now.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say these people because for Pete's
Speaker 1: sake or for Polk's sake, we have all been these
Speaker 1: people at some point when we are attempting to somehow
Speaker 1: encapsulate the entirety of in person communication in a single
Speaker 1: form of that communication.
Speaker 2: Ben, you do not strike me as a text shouter.
Speaker 2: You are far too eloquent for that. Say it ain't.
Speaker 1: So that's very kind, but I feel that it works
Speaker 1: really well with some comedic things. There was only one
Speaker 1: time in my life I ever did it seriously, and
Speaker 1: I stand by you gotta pick your battles. So what
Speaker 1: happened when we look at the state of communication. What's
Speaker 1: strange is that in any Latin based language, so anything
Speaker 1: that doesn't use idiograms, like a like an Eastern language.
Speaker 1: Right in any Latin based language, it is known as
Speaker 1: shouting if you use capital letters. We mentioned that this
Speaker 1: goes further back than you might imagine, but how far
Speaker 1: back does it go?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really interesting because you would think that this
Speaker 2: is sort of a product of the Internet, like we
Speaker 2: were talking about with those early message boards and stuff. But
Speaker 2: as it turns out, according to a really cool piece
Speaker 2: written on dot com, which I think started out as
Speaker 2: like an e commerce site and then ended up being
Speaker 2: more of a message board, a guy by the name
Speaker 2: of Dave Fleischmann kind of delves into the evolution of
Speaker 2: using all caps as this indicator of shouting, and he
Speaker 2: actually found quite a few examples that date back hundreds
Speaker 2: of years.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, Noel, I propose that as we
Speaker 1: travel to meet mister Fleischmann, we go the long route
Speaker 1: and stop by the Roman Empire first, courtesy of our
Speaker 1: super producer's time machine.
Speaker 2: He is really a jack of all trades that Casey
Speaker 2: pegri Mean produces at its Engineers has a segment on
Speaker 2: the case with Casey, and as it turns out, as
Speaker 2: a scientific genius and inventor of time machines, we are
Speaker 2: some lucky dudes to be associated with this giant.
Speaker 1: Do you notice that he doesn't go with us on
Speaker 1: these jaunts through time and space?
Speaker 2: No, No, he has to be in the home base,
Speaker 2: keeping an eye on things and making and he pulls
Speaker 2: us out in a Star Trek style when things get.
Speaker 1: Hairy, you gotta have a man at the switch. Right
Speaker 1: here we are Roman Empire. Observe all the amazing architecture,
Speaker 1: all the strange dress, all the written text.
Speaker 2: I'm doing it. I'm observing it.
Speaker 1: And as we're looking at this architecture, let's observe all
Speaker 1: these numerous written inscriptions, those capital letters. Capital letters evolved
Speaker 1: in this time during the Roman Empire because the stonecutters
Speaker 1: who made these monuments and made these buildings also made
Speaker 1: inscriptions using large straight letters. They both were easily legible,
Speaker 1: and they showed a grandiose nature. Right, they added some gravitas.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: Ben.
Speaker 2: In fact, in an article from The New Republic by
Speaker 2: Alice rob rob interviews Professor Paul Luna, who's the director
Speaker 2: of the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication at the
Speaker 2: University of Reading in the UK, and Luna cites that
Speaker 2: the use of all caps was meant to convey grandeur, pomposity,
Speaker 2: esthetic seriousness, and has been used that way for thousands
Speaker 2: of years. As we're seeing with our very eyes during
Speaker 2: this time travel tableau.
Speaker 1: Yes, and there's not a chicken and egg situation here,
Speaker 1: which I find so fascinating. It is proven that what
Speaker 1: we interpret is uppercase today did come before. Lowercase lowercase
Speaker 1: became an adaptation of uppercase, the same way that Taken
Speaker 1: started out as a film and is now a television adaptation.
Speaker 2: That's a really good way of looking at it. It's
Speaker 2: true lowercase letters were developed more as a functional kind
Speaker 2: of thing so that books could be written by hand.
Speaker 2: In fact, it was during Charlemagne's Carolinian Renaissance, which happened
Speaker 2: from the late eighth century to the ninth century, where
Speaker 2: a group of monks under the leadership of Alcion of York,
Speaker 2: who is an English scholar, created this Carolinian minuscule script
Speaker 2: that would serve as the basis for what would become
Speaker 2: the modern uppercase lowercase alphabet.
Speaker 1: We know today, right that sweet Sweet mixtape, that crossover,
Speaker 1: that ven diagram where you can write every letter at
Speaker 1: least two ways. Fast forward to Italy. By the time
Speaker 1: movable type reaches Italy, this writing had evolved to that
Speaker 1: consistent model. And if we check back with our friend
Speaker 1: mister Fleischman, whom I would like to call Dave at
Speaker 1: this point, are you okay with that? I'm okay with Dave,
Speaker 1: all right.
Speaker 2: So it's one of the Daves we know.
Speaker 1: He's one of the Daves.
Speaker 2: We know.
Speaker 1: There are several days we know, but he is one.
Speaker 1: Dave tells us that the first citation he can find
Speaker 1: in the modern age for the use of all caps
Speaker 1: for some sort of emphasis occurs in a Washington, DC
Speaker 1: newspaper called The Evening Star, in an article that published
Speaker 1: on February twenty eighth, eighteen fifty six. And there's a
Speaker 1: use of air quotes here. Dave calls it a quote
Speaker 1: hilarious dialect story about a Dutchman who appears to be
Speaker 1: disease written. And we have the sentence here for you.
Speaker 2: I had tell's you I've got there's smallpox, don't you
Speaker 2: vetesh there's smallpox? This time he shouted it in capital.
Speaker 1: Letters, and the capital letters there there smallpox are small pox.
Speaker 1: And I think that was a great reading. Noel, we
Speaker 1: want to say, we are not we are not doing
Speaker 1: any sort of Dutch stereotype or Dutch.
Speaker 2: It isn't a bad Dutch Dutch voice named a Dutchman once.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think it was a bad Dutch voice.
Speaker 1: But I want people to know that you were reading
Speaker 1: it as it was written.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, indeed, yes, indeed, as it turns out, I
Speaker 2: think he was talking about a small box and not
Speaker 2: small box. That's what it says in the article by
Speaker 2: by Fleischmann. We've got a bunch of cool examples of
Speaker 2: this from mister Fleischman. Another one is from eighteen seventy
Speaker 2: from The Shamrock in Ireland, which published a multi part
Speaker 2: fictional series called The Sore Grievance of Well Spanked John.
Speaker 2: He was well spanked and at one point the narrator,
Speaker 2: for whatever reason I'd like to get my hands on,
Speaker 2: this is thrown into a basket of duck eggs. Must
Speaker 2: have been a big basket.
Speaker 1: Yes, and we have the line here is shortly after
Speaker 1: his aunt is told she must pay for this great
Speaker 1: basket of duck eggs, twelve shillis and seven pence roared
Speaker 1: my aunts in the biggest capital letters twelve and sevenpence.
Speaker 1: Good gracious me, that is a hefty ticket price for
Speaker 1: a basket of duckgs. But if it was big enough
Speaker 1: for a grown.
Speaker 2: Man to fall into, that actually seems like a pretty
Speaker 2: good deal if he asked.
Speaker 1: Me yes, or for anyone you know, don't. Isn't that
Speaker 1: part of the American dream? A basket of duck eggs
Speaker 1: big enough to fall in?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I like it, you know, sort of like a
Speaker 2: metaphor for the good life, like a bowl of cherries,
Speaker 2: a basket of duck eggs.
Speaker 1: There we go, and in the it's interesting because in
Speaker 1: both of these cases there are capital letters, but they
Speaker 1: apply to two different things. They have two different connotations,
Speaker 1: which I would argue are readily apparent. In the Evening
Speaker 1: Star example, as as Noel explained, their small pox is
Speaker 1: humorous with its capitalization right, and we are laughing at
Speaker 1: the character's voice because it meant small box, but they
Speaker 1: said small pox. And in the second example, the capitalization
Speaker 1: is on twelve and seven because the aunt is so
Speaker 1: aghast at.
Speaker 2: This rapacious fee for that bastard duck egg. Next, we
Speaker 2: have one that's really interesting because it comes from a
Speaker 2: manual for the proper use of the language right. So
Speaker 2: this is from eighteen eighty and the book was called
Speaker 2: The Standard Speaker, an Elocutionist, and it says to readers
Speaker 2: give some examples that the following selections are marked in
Speaker 2: capital letters, which is in capital letters in this quote
Speaker 2: as the appropriate place for shouting emphasis.
Speaker 1: And it uses an example of a fantastic poem by
Speaker 1: Tennyson called the Charge of the Light Brigade. There are
Speaker 1: other examples such as the enthusiasm of the shout in
Speaker 1: capital letters or warning signals which flash up in front
Speaker 1: of his eyes and shout in capital letters, slow down.
Speaker 1: That's nineteen thirteen, and all of.
Speaker 2: These examples are from that piece Capital Crimes, Part one Shout, Shout,
Speaker 2: Let it All Out, by our pal Dave Fleischmann. And
Speaker 2: you can check this out yourself on man dot com.
Speaker 2: Definitely worth a read, and it's two parts to boot.
Speaker 1: And so we see these uses of language evolving in
Speaker 1: different places, almost in different periods of time. And the
Speaker 1: funny thing is that every single time pop up post
Speaker 1: Roman era people know what it means. They know if
Speaker 1: it's a joke when they're reading it, they know if
Speaker 1: it's a very strong imperative sentence. You know or any
Speaker 1: number of traffic signs that I have been in trouble
Speaker 1: for violating.
Speaker 2: And we will get back to traffic signs a little
Speaker 2: bit later. But you're absolutely correct. So I think all
Speaker 2: of this talk we've been doing, we we've been doing
Speaker 2: in the Roman era, so we should we should, we
Speaker 2: should rewind back to the present.
Speaker 1: Yeah, people are looking at us. Good call, good call, Hey, Casey,
Speaker 1: thanks for pulling us back there. We we got a
Speaker 1: just doing my job.
Speaker 2: Not I know, but it was getting hairy and we
Speaker 2: didn't He knew. He already knew. He had it queued
Speaker 2: up and ready to go. He didn't even need us
Speaker 2: to use the safe word, which is fidelia. That's your
Speaker 2: safe word.
Speaker 1: I have a different one.
Speaker 2: He has a little confusing.
Speaker 1: What's up?
Speaker 2: He's a little confusing. We shouldn't shou should we just
Speaker 2: sync up on safe words. I'm glad to use yours.
Speaker 2: Oh oh, hey, you don't want to share it.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't be safe.
Speaker 2: That's fair. We are in a president where the president
Speaker 2: of the United States tweets using all caps, which is interesting.
Speaker 1: Yes, interesting, and sets a precedent. We are watching linguistic
Speaker 1: history evolve as we record today right. For Fleischmann, there's
Speaker 1: a difference between shouting and signifying importance, right, And Fleischmann
Speaker 1: does argue he's on the same page with us that
Speaker 1: everyone alive today who uses nonline service understands that when
Speaker 1: you use upper case you're shouting.
Speaker 2: It is kind of intuitive and it makes sense visually actually,
Speaker 2: because Professor Paul Luna in that New Republic piece is
Speaker 2: how he characterizes him quote all capitals provides visibility maximum
Speaker 2: size within a given area. All caps in an email
Speaker 2: looks like shouting because when someone shouting, you're aware of
Speaker 2: the shout and not the nuance. All caps fills the space,
Speaker 2: so there's an element of feeling that the message is
Speaker 2: crowding out everything else. And this kind of comes back
Speaker 2: to the idea that in general shouty caps is looked
Speaker 2: at as kind of poor form and kind of rude
Speaker 2: and almost a replacement for substance at times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed, and a little bit outdated because it's associated
Speaker 1: with perhaps a lack of familiarity with online communication in
Speaker 1: this day and age. And found a very interesting thing here.
Speaker 1: The original typewriters were all capital, were all uppercase letters,
Speaker 1: meaning that if you had an older outdated keyboarder, typewriter,
Speaker 1: something pre eighteen ninety four. So then the only letters
Speaker 1: you could send would look like very loud telegrams.
Speaker 2: And it's funny because my mom texts this way to
Speaker 2: this day. I'm not joking. She texts not all caps,
Speaker 2: but there's no punctuation. But that has become kind of
Speaker 2: a trope, right that if you are seen as using
Speaker 2: all caps, you're either being rude and loud and shouty,
Speaker 2: or like you said, you're using outdated technology and therefore
Speaker 2: seen as being old school, or really just plain old.
Speaker 2: And let's get back to our tweeting president. A guy
Speaker 2: named Stephen Huxley who's the Chair of Communication and Media
Speaker 2: at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia. He says in
Speaker 2: an article from The Washington Post that it's pretty unusual.
Speaker 2: Highly unusual is how he phrases it, for a president
Speaker 2: to rely on all caps in these public messages. And
Speaker 2: that is because I'm gonna quote him, because it's perfect quote.
Speaker 2: If your message is good, your message is clear, you
Speaker 2: don't need to add emphasis. It's irrelevant. He says that
Speaker 2: using all caps signals that there has been a communication
Speaker 2: breakdown between the sender and the receiver, so it implies
Speaker 2: that you're kind of struggling to communicate in a way.
Speaker 2: And he uses the example of someone who is trying
Speaker 2: to communicate with someone who speaks a foreign language and
Speaker 2: repeats themselves, not only repeats themselves, but actually yeah, but
Speaker 2: she shouts as though like the loudness of it will
Speaker 2: make it easier to understand, which we all know is
Speaker 2: absolutely not the case, and comes off as like WHOA,
Speaker 2: get out of my face with that, you know. And
Speaker 2: he says that it's poor form and it's rude, and
Speaker 2: it's received as rude as it should be, kind of.
Speaker 1: And so if we ask where this spring from in
Speaker 1: the modern age online, right, we know that we know
Speaker 1: that beforehand it was relatively intuitive. Right, pay attention to
Speaker 1: this is what that means, especially if you're looking at
Speaker 1: a sentence where upper and lower case phrases are mixed together.
Speaker 1: If you look at all of them, you're going, oh, no,
Speaker 1: another forward email from one of my relatives or something.
Speaker 1: In the online sphere, early Internet users would say this
Speaker 1: interpretation of all caps is shouting like the current president
Speaker 1: would go back to at least nineteen eighty four in March,
Speaker 1: there was a fellow named Dave Deco DCOT who was
Speaker 1: at the time a computer science student at Case Western
Speaker 1: Reserve University. In a forum, he laid out what he
Speaker 1: saw as three different types of communication through visual design,
Speaker 1: right rather than content. He said that there were three
Speaker 1: sorts of emphasis in use, and he ordered them in popularity.
Speaker 1: So we're going to start at number three and go
Speaker 1: up to the most popular. Number three, he said, was
Speaker 1: SPACEC words out, putting a space between the S, the P,
Speaker 1: the A, the CDI in G in spacing.
Speaker 2: And it's interesting because the spacing out words thing is
Speaker 2: kind of stuck around, but more in an aesthetic way,
Speaker 2: with like meme pages and message boards and tumbler like
Speaker 2: as a way of kind of creating sort of a
Speaker 2: fun aesthetic look like For example, there's a band that
Speaker 2: I really like, an electronic band called Survive, and the
Speaker 2: way their name is always printed is in all caps
Speaker 2: with a space between every letter. So this actually combines it,
Speaker 2: which is what he said it would do, spacing words out,
Speaker 2: possibly accompanied by one and two on this list too,
Speaker 2: being using asterisks to put sparklers around an emphasized word.
Speaker 2: I've never heard that before. That's funny.
Speaker 1: So try to hear this is going to be a
Speaker 1: fun experiment for everybody. Try to read that sentence again
Speaker 1: and then put asterisks if you can verbally around one
Speaker 1: of those words. And let's see if people can guess
Speaker 1: which one it is.
Speaker 2: Using asterisks to put sparklers around emphasized words.
Speaker 1: I feel like that was pretty a parent, don't you.
Speaker 2: I wish I had a way like verbally to make
Speaker 2: my words sparkle.
Speaker 1: I think you do pretty well. I think we both do.
Speaker 1: And number one, of course, is using capital letters to
Speaker 1: make the word look louder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 1: So this again dates back to a hardware issue, a
Speaker 1: technological adaptation issue. We talked about early typewriters. I mentioned
Speaker 1: the evolution from upper lowercase for typewriters, but there was
Speaker 1: something similar that occurred with computer terminals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. This message board post was just after
Speaker 2: computer terminals switched from all upper case, like you're talking
Speaker 2: about those old typewriters, to mixed case keyboards. So when
Speaker 2: you've got the option of either writing in lowercase or
Speaker 2: uppercase letters, or a mix of the two. The early
Speaker 2: web thought that all caps was a great way to
Speaker 2: communicate emphasis or shouting. But if you didn't know what
Speaker 2: the the nettica I guess was, then using all caps
Speaker 2: just made you seem old, like I was saying earlier,
Speaker 2: this idea that you were not up to date on
Speaker 2: the newer technology or the new Internet lingo.
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, As I pointed out with the typewriter's stuff,
Speaker 1: the implication is that perhaps somebody is still bound by
Speaker 1: pre existing or on updated technology, or as Noel mentioned,
Speaker 1: perhaps they are not catching up on connectiquette. So Fleischmann
Speaker 1: was pretty clear that the Internet did not invent this.
Speaker 1: So every time you get that crazy email or that
Speaker 1: strange text or that weird post in a forum where
Speaker 1: somebody's saying something relatively normal, such as, I don't know,
Speaker 1: peanut butter sandwiches are actually pretty good with bananas and
Speaker 1: honey added, and it's all in caps, they might not
Speaker 1: know that they're yelling at you. It's a real thing
Speaker 1: and it existed before the Internet. They're smallpox. It's actually
Speaker 1: it's actually a pretty good joke, and I like the
Speaker 1: way Noel read it. And where does this leave us today?
Speaker 2: Well, in this article, how all caps came to signify
Speaker 2: shouting as in Trump's see You in Court by Ben
Speaker 2: Greno from The Washington Post. Guarna makes a really interesting
Speaker 2: point about the evolution of language. He cites a quote
Speaker 2: from Richard Stirling, who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.
Speaker 2: He spoke to The New York Times and was talking
Speaker 2: about this idea that younger Internet users who've been brought
Speaker 2: up with a much more casual attitude towards capitalization and punctuation,
Speaker 2: how casual emails often are completely written in lowercase. And
Speaker 2: he says, I think in the future capitalization will disappear.
Speaker 2: And he says he doesn't think it's that worrying at all,
Speaker 2: because language, as we've talked about in other episodes of
Speaker 2: the show, can evolve and should be adaptable. But it's
Speaker 2: interesting because there is actually has been sort of a
Speaker 2: backlash against the caps lock key the key itself. Do
Speaker 2: you know about this, Ben, This is really interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, tell us about it well.
Speaker 2: In the New Republic article how capital letters became Internet
Speaker 2: code for yelling, the author Alice rob spoke to a
Speaker 2: man by the name of Matthew J. X Malady who
Speaker 2: made it his life's work, or at least part of it.
Speaker 2: To get rid of the caps lock key entirely, and
Speaker 2: he told Slate quote the key is a nuisance, it's
Speaker 2: prime real estate, leading us to depress it unintentionally and
Speaker 2: often unwinningly. And the article also talks about a man
Speaker 2: named Peter Hinchens who launched a campaign called caps off
Speaker 2: in two thousand and six to get the key removed
Speaker 2: from the keyboard entirely. It was not a successful effort
Speaker 2: yet yet it is still around. But yeah, you know
Speaker 2: you use the shift key. Why do you even need
Speaker 2: caps lock? You just to hold down the shift key.
Speaker 1: Hilarious part about the caps off campaign, by the way,
Speaker 1: is that their slogan is stop shouting in all caps
Speaker 1: in good riddance. The article by Christopher Beam on Slate.
Speaker 1: They also note that Google, when they unveiled their Google
Speaker 1: CR forty eight notebook, made the decision to ditch the
Speaker 1: caps lock key. No way, Yeah, they took it out.
Speaker 1: Oh man, you're going to have to hold down shift
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen. And if you think about it, if
Speaker 1: you're looking at if you're in the Western world, you're
Speaker 1: probably working with a Querity computer named after the six
Speaker 1: letters at the top left right. Then you can see
Speaker 1: if you look at your keyboard now, if you have
Speaker 1: one that caps like can shift are kind of redundant.
Speaker 2: You know, you ever noticed those little braille kind of
Speaker 2: hash marks on the F and the J keys on keyboard?
Speaker 2: Apparently those are meant to help you find the home
Speaker 2: row touch type, you can touch type. I don't do that.
Speaker 2: I didn't want to type like that. I just kind
Speaker 2: of learned, you know, throw it into the fire and
Speaker 2: just kind of figured it all out. I'm a child
Speaker 2: of the Internet. This is neat, though, this movement away
Speaker 2: from all caps, and this like seeing it as being
Speaker 2: kind of ghost and like poor communication skills. It extends
Speaker 2: to government agencies. As it turns out, the National Weather
Speaker 2: Service had a history of using all caps and its
Speaker 2: weather reports, and that was because the teletype machine that
Speaker 2: had been historically used only communicated in capital letters. But
Speaker 2: on April eleventh, the twenty sixteen, the National Weather Service
Speaker 2: sent a press release in all caps that said, this
Speaker 2: listen up. Beginning on May eleven, Noah's National Weather Service
Speaker 2: forecasts will stop yelling at you.
Speaker 1: That's great. This is where we're at now. It appears
Speaker 1: that the reign of all caps may be coming to
Speaker 1: a close, as conecticuet evolves. But I argue there's something
Speaker 1: greater at work here, and I want to see what
Speaker 1: you think about this, Noel, because we see these backlashes
Speaker 1: against the language changing English, the language we are speaking in.
Speaker 1: In case anybody was listening and wondering what is this
Speaker 1: strange sound? I understand English is a living language, which
Speaker 1: means that it evolves by consensus. No matter how the
Speaker 1: people at the OED or Oxford English Dictionary labor, ultimately,
Speaker 1: the people who speak the language decide what the language
Speaker 1: means and how it is best represented audibly or in type,
Speaker 1: in some sort of physical form. What we're seeing, despite
Speaker 1: the objection of the numerous so called grammar nazis, is
Speaker 1: a move away from punctuation, and we're moving toward, or
Speaker 1: should I say back toward an idiogrammatic sort of language.
Speaker 1: With the rise of one of your favorite things, pal emoji.
Speaker 2: I'm a fan. You know. Our coworker Tristan, another super
Speaker 2: producer in the house Stuff Works family, is a big
Speaker 2: fan of communicating exclusively using emojis solely, and he only
Speaker 2: chose like three, yeah, exactly, but somehow it gets the
Speaker 2: idea across the O face emoji is the big one
Speaker 2: he likes to use.
Speaker 1: And what we're noting here about the ideographic use of
Speaker 1: emoji is that currently it seems really controversial. As we're
Speaker 1: recording this, just a few years back, pretty recent in
Speaker 1: the historical record, someone wrote a novel entirely an emoji,
Speaker 1: which I have not read, so I cannot comment on it.
Speaker 1: But there are a lot of faces in it. Ooh,
Speaker 1: there's an eggplant. That might be the racy part here.
Speaker 2: There's a movie that's written all in emoji like a script. No,
Speaker 2: it's the Emoji Movie. Okay, yes, really sad Casey Pegrim
Speaker 2: will cringe at this. But Saudi Arabia recently lifted its
Speaker 2: ban on public movie screenings and the first movie that
Speaker 2: was available for public screening was the Emoji Movie.
Speaker 1: So emoji are popular, and what strange is that they're
Speaker 1: approaching a universality and ubiquity. They're approaching something like a
Speaker 1: common tongue. You and I don't have to speak Arabic
Speaker 1: in order to understand a smiling face.
Speaker 2: It's true. But these sets of emoji graphics that come
Speaker 2: stock on a lot of phones have their roots in Japan,
Speaker 2: and so there are a lot of emojis that have
Speaker 2: different meanings you know, to the Japanese and they do
Speaker 2: to us. And then there are the most more basic
Speaker 2: ones that are just like, you know, a smiling face
Speaker 2: or the O face or what have you, that we
Speaker 2: can take and understand more universally. But then there are
Speaker 2: you know, in these sets that you go real deep in.
Speaker 2: They're like foods that maybe we're not super familiar with
Speaker 2: or just I can't think of a specific example right now,
Speaker 2: can you? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Gestures? And I'm really glad you mentioned this, because while
Speaker 1: it is easier to communicate across languages an emoji, it's
Speaker 1: not instant fluency. It's very culturally dependent. So in the
Speaker 1: Western world, or let's call it Abramaic religions Judeo Christian values,
Speaker 1: the folded hands like this are seen as representing prayer.
Speaker 1: Japanese emoji users will see it as a salutation, and
Speaker 1: younger people from a secular background think about this, think
Speaker 1: it's a high five. Isn't that interesting?
Speaker 2: Interesting? Or it could be just like kind of a
Speaker 2: wonder twins unite kind of. I use it as thank you?
Speaker 2: Is that the common use in America?
Speaker 1: I use it as thank you or an ironic bless
Speaker 1: up nice with a hashtag. So we bring emoji up
Speaker 1: just to show that the story of the all capital
Speaker 1: shout is one piece of a larger tapestry, a tapestry
Speaker 1: that we as speakers of a language, as writers of
Speaker 1: a language, are helping to weave collectively. You're important, You're
Speaker 1: a part of this. If you want the semi colon
Speaker 1: to stay, then by golly, you have to fight for it.
Speaker 1: And if you want, if you want to write entirely
Speaker 1: in emoji, the hieroglyphic of our time, then you have
Speaker 1: to fight for that as well.
Speaker 2: Because I mean, at the end of the day, communication
Speaker 2: is just about the message, not the medium for the
Speaker 2: most part, right, So whatever works is pretty much fair game,
Speaker 2: or at least that's the way it's seen with texting
Speaker 2: and internet communication and all of this stuff that's led
Speaker 2: to where we are today. So what is your preferred
Speaker 2: method for conveying emphasis in text? Let us know how
Speaker 2: you let your significant other know that you're not grumpy
Speaker 2: when you send them a matter of fact text to
Speaker 2: pick up some milk from the store. Because I'm telling
Speaker 2: you it's so funny, like it's I do it myself.
Speaker 2: Where someone will just text me okay, period or something,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, WHOA, what did I do? You know?
Speaker 2: And it's so unreasonable. You have no inclination that this
Speaker 2: person isn't angrier that you've done anything, But it's so
Speaker 2: easy to get in your own head about what could
Speaker 2: be going on that would lead them to send you
Speaker 2: such a terse text. Please help us, let us know.
Speaker 2: How do you communicate emphasis? How do you communicate levity?
Speaker 2: We want to know. Write us at ridiculous at HowStuffWorks
Speaker 2: dot com. You can also hit us up on social
Speaker 2: media where we are Ridiculous History on Facebook, Twitter, and
Speaker 2: also Instagram.
Speaker 1: You can additionally, while you're on the internet, check out
Speaker 1: an excellent key and Peel sketch about the dangers of
Speaker 1: communication via text, similar to the Kids in the Hall
Speaker 1: sketch about the guy who doesn't know that he sounds sarcastic.
Speaker 1: Bonus points, friends and neighbors. If you can, in your
Speaker 1: email show us the form that you prefer. Don't just
Speaker 1: tell us about it, do the whole thing. If you
Speaker 1: send an email that is entirely an emoji, we will
Speaker 1: decipher it. We have top people on the case.
Speaker 2: One of those top people is Jesseln Shields, who wrote
Speaker 2: the article shouty caps are a much older invention than
Speaker 2: you think for HowStuffWorks dot Com. So thanks to Jesslin
Speaker 2: for her contributions to this episode, and.
Speaker 1: Of course we would also like to thank our super producer,
Speaker 1: Casey Pegger.
Speaker 2: And Alex Williams, who wrote our theme.
Speaker 1: And most importantly, picture an asterisk around this next word you.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening so sparkly all of you, and be
Speaker 2: sure to join us next time for another episode of
Speaker 2: ridiculous History. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.