Drink decaffeinated coffee. Write decappinated copy.
“Why did you cap those words? You’re not writing German!” Seems like all the good copywriting lessons came early, in my far-off apprenticeship writing in a catalog house.
Upper-casing the first letters of words in book, report and press release titles and newspaper headlines is an established convention, but whose bright idea was it to bring it to the Web?
Folks who study this kind of thing have determined that the human eye would rather not negotiate the sentence like a miniature roller-coaster. A sentence such as this, (tweaked to protect the guilty), does not a comfortable reader make.
Vacation & Laziness Magazine Ranks XYZ Company Top In Both Patagonian And Upper Slobovian Luxury Villa Rental Categories, Calling Them The “Gold Standard” Of The Rent-A-Villa Industry.
Somebody thought that capping would somehow impart importance to the words, I guess. Instead, they’ve created a typographic uproar—and the undeservedly capped words diminish the importance of the words that should be capped.
It may be no more than a subconscious irritant to a reader but, in web copywriting, every microscopic upwards adjustment in reader-friendliness counts.
Stick with the rules for upper case. Knock the caps off.
