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

What Is The Origin Of That?

  • Yoruio
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    5311 months 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?

      • @Ilikepornaddict
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        211 months 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.

  • @[email protected]
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    4711 months 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.

    • FuglyDuck
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      611 months ago

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

      • @[email protected]
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        1411 months 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.

  • @[email protected]
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    1611 months 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.

  • @[email protected]
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    1111 months 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?

    • @[email protected]
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      11 months 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.

    • @[email protected]
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      311 months 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.

  • @[email protected]
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    811 months 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.

    • @[email protected]
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      311 months ago

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

      Source: I am german.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 months 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
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    611 months 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.

  • @[email protected]
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    311 months 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
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    211 months ago

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

    • @[email protected]
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      11 months ago

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

  • Atemu
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    111 months ago

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

  • Norgur
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    111 months 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!

    • @Ilikepornaddict
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      211 months ago

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