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] 129 points 2 years ago (4 children)

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

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 119 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago
[โ€“] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)
[โ€“] [email protected] 23 points 2 years ago

Fucking communists.

[โ€“] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

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

It's still used for book titles, though.

[โ€“] [email protected] 13 points 2 years 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 2 years 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€“] Canadian_Cabinet 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Same for Spanish, barring any proper nouns

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

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 2 years 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] 1 points 2 years 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€“] Yoruio 58 points 2 years 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 2 years ago

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

In the uk they just teach us about proper nouns

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

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 14 points 2 years 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 2 years 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 2 years 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 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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] 3 points 2 years 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] 8 points 2 years 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 2 years 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 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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 2 years ago (1 children)

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

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

:facepalm: (Fixed)

I need to focus more when typing :)

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 2 years 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 2 years 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 2 years ago (1 children)

tIME tO uSE aNTI tITLE cASE

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

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

ConJunCtion JuncTion What'S YUur FuncTion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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