Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
NOTE: use Perl; is on undef hiatus. You can read content, but you can't post it. More info will be forthcoming forthcomingly.

All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

If I scramble the middle thoughts, will you still get me? 2 Comments More | Login | Reply /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More | Login | Reply
Loading... please wait.
  • You touched on a point I learned by studying typography. "All Caps" is harder to read because our eyes look at the overall shape of a word. Especially for things viewed from a distance, that's what you see before you can even make out the letters.

    It's ironic that people choose to use all-caps to make something more important or visible, when they may actually be making it header to read.

    I think of the road-side signs with changeable plastic letters.

    All-caps work OK to emphasis things in small does, but doing things like writing a three page warning in all-caps can just add unnecessary strain on readers.

    • Yes! All caps is a bad idea in many cases. It should be used ONLY for VERY short bits of text.

      However, that’s not for the reason you cite. “Bouma shape [wikipedia.org]” has been conclusively refuted. In fact, the scrambled-middle-letters myth, while making a ridiculous claim, clearly disproves that we recognise words by their shape, because if the context provides enough clues, you can read scrambled-middle-letters words without even slowing down – despite the fact that the word shape has been com

Stories, comments, journals, and other submissions on use Perl; are Copyright 1998-2006, their respective owners.