Why Text in All Caps is Hard for Users to Read
by anthony on 09/04/10 at 4:14 pm
Do you remember the story where a woman got fired from her job for using all caps in an email? There’s something about text in all caps that turns people off. Using it in a social context means you’re yelling. But using it in a design context means your website has bad readability. People sometimes use text in all caps to emphasize their message. However, what they are actually doing is de-emphasizing their message. This is because text in all caps reduces the shape contrast for each word.
The shape of any word put in all caps for any font, either sans-serif or serif, is a rectangle. This means that text in all caps only show one parallel edge at the top and bottom of each word, giving them low shape contrast. However, text put in title style capitalization show multiple adjacent edges at the top and bottom, giving them high shape contrast. The more nonparallel edges your text has, the higher the shape contrast it has. High shape contrast makes each word easy for users to recognize. If you want your to make your text easier to read, consider using title style capitalization instead of all caps.
When is it okay to use all caps? All caps are fine in contexts that don’t involve reading, such as logos and acronyms. But when your message involves reading, don’t force users to read it with bad shape contrast. The caps lock key is a key that designers should rarely use. In emails, using all caps is a sign of bad manners. In design, using all caps is a sign of bad readability.
pac-man
Sep 4th, 2010
The major missing element in this analysis is learned behavior. How much does the long dominant use of mixed case in the English language affect readability?
In Russian it is often the case, perhaps dominantly, that all caps mixed large/small (first letter of sentence, names, etc. are large caps followed by smaller caps) is used. Mixed caps does include a distinguishing sized initial letter, but it is then followed by all square letters – effectively falling somewhere between English all caps and English initial-caps.
Does that mean Russians are unnecessarily hindering their capability to read – or does it mean that long term dominant behavior plays a significant role in readability?
pac-man
Sep 4th, 2010
The major missing element in this analysis is learned behavior. How much does the long dominant use of mixed case in the English language affect readability?
In Russian it is often the case, perhaps dominantly, that all caps mixed large/small (first letter of sentence, names, etc. are large caps followed by smaller caps) is used. Mixed caps does include a distinguishing sized initial letter, but it is then followed by all square letters – effectively falling somewhere between English all caps and English mixed case.
Does that mean Russians are unnecessarily hindering their capability to read – or does it mean that long term dominant behavior plays a significant role in readability?
I’m reminded of the interesting behavior where readability is surprisingly maintained (though clearly affected) when only the first and last letters of a word are consistently positioned.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/fontblog/archive/2006/05/09/594050.aspx
Ivan
Sep 6th, 2010
Your facts are wrong, or you meant some other language I am unaware of, but there’s no such thing as all caps in russian. In fact, in russian it is grammatically correct to capitalize only the First letter of the title, not Every Word As In English.
Lenary
Sep 6th, 2010
This is why in the UK, all placenames on roadsigns are printed capitalized, not uppercase – it’s easier to recognise the names from the shape they make than from actually reading them if travelling at speed.
This was all discovered back ages ago. it’s a surprise how these things come back around
Daniel Tenner
Sep 6th, 2010
See Word Recognition for a very good paper that debunks the word shape model, which has, apparently, long since been superseded by the parallel letter recognition model.
Susan Weinschenk
Sep 6th, 2010
The word shape model is still talked about a lot, but Daniel is right, it’s out of date. I wrote a blog post that summarizes the research on this topic, called It’s a Myth That All Capital Letters Are Inherently Harder to Read: http://bit.ly/8QUScv
anthony
Sep 8th, 2010
The title of the article you link to is misleading to people. It’s not a myth that all capital letters are harder to read. In the conclusion you say, “All capital (uppercase) letters are slower for people to read, but only because they aren’t used to them.” This confirms that it’s not a myth.
It’s hard for people to read because of the word shape or “parallel letter recognition” if you want to get semantically technical. The word shape contributes to letter recognition, so the shape of the word is still a factor. The insight that you are trying to offer is that people recognize words by anticipating the sequence of letters, which is why having letters or words that vary in its shape is important.
I welcome other point of views that add value to discussion, but please be more careful with your headlines, as to not mislead people. And if there is something that is different than what is mentioned highlight it so people can see. It helps.
Brian
May 8th, 2012
Interesting that the author of the blog post supposedly debunking word shape as a readability issue…publishes the blog in lower case instead of in ALL CAPS. I wonder why?
In the days of teletypes in radio and TV newsrooms, the information came across in ALL CAPS and was read by announcers fairly easily – perhaps they were used to it?
A n d . . . w h a t o f k e r n i n g ?
SMRT
Sep 7th, 2010
I DON’T GET IT.
Stacia
Sep 7th, 2010
What about no title casing? That was pretty hip for a while, and lots of sites still do it. So like buttons would just be “save” instead of “Save” or “SAVE”. Or I remember in my tech writing classes being taught that initial caps in headings slowed down readability too.
int19h
May 9th, 2012
Metro UI on Windows Phone actually uses lowercase-only for titles quite often, e.g:
http://windowstotal.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/ebay-mobile-windows-phone-7.png
Grace
May 18th, 2011
Totally agree! Great analysis!
greg
Aug 9th, 2011
The apostrophe key should also be used with caution
otheridols
Nov 29th, 2011
I would have put an apostrophe after “used.”
gordon
Feb 17th, 2012
Cheers, and thanks for the well illustrated explanation
Melanie
Mar 21st, 2012
Now begs the question of whether words in all caps with the first letter of each word bigger than the rest is easier to read or as easy to read as not using all caps.
Ed
Jun 10th, 2012
As a dutchman I was tought to read phonetically because unlike English many other langauages are phonetic and have consistent spelling. I have noticed over the years that English speakers are not taught to read phonetically and appear to have great difficulty reading foreign words or in fact any unfamiliar words. I do not have this problem as my brain reads words like a string of beads, I read each letter seperately and then form a word; English speakers appear to me (I wonder is anyone has done research on this) to read by recognizing entire words and hence have problems with recognizing new words they have not learned yet and I wonder if this may be the reason UPPERCASE words are harder for them to read? Personally, I have absolutely no problem to read in any case and can read fluently upside down or even back to front reading from a mirror. Anyone have any ideas about this?
Matt Watson
Dec 12th, 2012
Phew – I thought for a minute someone was going to start banging on about the added readability a serif font offers.
I also thought that someone would explore the differences of font applications and try holding this theorem up to blocks of text vs headline usages.
*HE WHISPERED*.