Writing in all caps is a common way to add emphasis to content, but it's actually an outdated practice that you should avoid. As we've previously mentioned in our blog posts on text emphasis, writing in all caps goes against best practices and creates significant problems for accessibility and usability.
Accessibility
The most important reason we do not use all caps is accessibility. We have a legal and moral responsibility to make our content easily accessible to everyone, and all caps is a major impediment to that.
Screen readers can misinterpret all-caps text as an acronym and spell out each letter rather than reading it as a single word. Those with dyslexia or cognitive disabilities will also find the text difficult to read due to the word lacking the distinct styling and sizes of upper and lowercase letters.
A good alternative to all caps for creating emphasis is using our custom text classes, which include options for style and visual-only emphasis.
Readability
Readability should always be a priority when managing your content. Best practices dictate that you want the reader to be able to scan the text quickly, but still process all important information.
For the best readability, you want to use headings and compact paragraphs to guide users to the most important information. Just like headings, all-caps text slows down reading, causing users to read specific passages and ignore surrounding text.
Visual Hierarchy and Design Consistency
A good heading hierarchy is essential for structuring your page, assisting screenreaders and optimizing pages for search engines.
All caps-text negatively impacts heading hierarchy by causing regular text to be mistaken for an H4 or an H5. It also creates style issues, as all-caps text will immediately stand out and ruin any consistency in typography. Keeping the design of the page pleasing to the eye and readable is a balancing act, and all caps text tips the scales too far.
Tone and Perception
While a lot of this may seem technical, there are also some common-sense reasons to avoid all caps.
For example, users can interpret all-caps text to mean you're yelling at them. That can come across as jarring or amateurish, setting an aggressive tone for your content that you definitely don't want. Remember, friendly and welcoming content is a key part of our FIU Brand guidelines.