But here’s what I feel- uppercase letters may have a readability advantage, but it’s restricted to certain conditions.Ĭapitalization is important. Visually, it looks bold, authoritative, and aggressive. It also works in the case of logos, where all capital letters create a brand identity that separates you from your competitors. If you dig deeper, you’ll find many more studies which suggest that for better readability all caps are better. The author writes that they are only somewhat harder to read due to lack of practice, but not because of their shape. When extra emphasis is needed, bold has been found to be a better cue than uppercase (Coles & Foster, 1975).”Ĭontrary to this, here’s one blog which debunks the myth that all capital letters are harder to read. Reading speed is optimal when uppercase and lowercase letters are used (Poulton, 1967 Rickards & August, 1975). “When text is set in all capital letters, reading speed is slowed about 13 to 20 percent (Breland & Breland, 1944). It appears that a common understanding prevails that when we use all capital letters, the formation is such that visually they appear to be of the same height hence tempering the diversity of the letterforms.Ī google search pointed me to the book Dynamics in Document Design which says: In order to understand why all capital letters are harder to read, I read a lot of blog posts which talk about why capital letters are bad for readability while scanning or reading a longer text. You’ll be surprised to know the reason behind the evolution of lowercase letters- they were invented to improve readability! *sigh* While searching for the usage of all capital letters in design, I stumbled upon this Quora answer about how non-capital letters emerged. Here’s everything in a nutshell- All capital letters (AC) I have been looking for books and research papers which have information regarding the best ways to capitalize on menu items, headings, and other UI features. The more I read about letter case, the more I became convinced that it’s a significant detail that designers must keep in mind while designing. One may think that battling for uppercase or lowercase is just another hyped-up detail of UX Design. Like everything else in design, it all comes down to Principle One– Empathize with your users. Someone will use it on a desktop, someone will use it on a mobile app. Everyone’s interaction with the application is different. Do factors like font size, typography, font color affect the readability? Does it affect user’s knowledge retention?Īlso, it’s important to understand that you can’t create a product personalized for each and every user. You need to figure out which option is easier for your users to scan through the text. The data from user research results will give you an idea about your targeted audience. Ideally, the decision to use capital letters or use sentence casing should be backed by extensive user research on the industry for whom you are designing. This subject has been picked up by many researchers and studies have been conducted to understand if a fixed pattern exists which can be used in UX design. To use capitalization or running case is just one of the many decisions where designers struggle to make the right choice. But now, when every design decision impacts the user experience, it has become important to pay attention to every detail. Ask a person who is a marketer and she will argue extensively about the importance of grabbing attention ( go for the headings!).Ī few years ago such small details didn’t matter. Nudge an English teacher and he/she will lecture you on the rules of grammar. Everyone has their own opinion about when to use all capital letters (AC), normal mixed case (MC), title case (TC).
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