My all-cap e-mails demand attention

By VERYIMP@YAHOO.COM

As a District Courthouse secretary, my time is very important. I have events to coordinate, phone calls to take and about a million pieces of paperwork to file. When I take the time to send an e-mail, you damn well better believe it is for a good reason - if I didn't need an immediate response, trust me, I'd send it snail mail. That's why I hit the CAPS LOCK before I type my e-mails - writing in all capital letters shows that I, and my words, are important and demand attention.

By typing in all capital letters, my weighty, influential words are physically given more importance. The reader, subliminally affected by the larger, more impactive type, engages the message with greater conviction than a typically fonted note. Best of all, reading my all-cap e-mails is not the least bit annoying.

Yes, from my long, descriptive subject headings, all the way down to the obscure quote that personalizes each of my electronic mailings, creating my text in all capital letters lets the reader know I mean business. Sure, perhaps capitalizing the quote at the bottom distracts slightly from the meat of my e-mail, but if I didn't capitalize it, the reader may not realize that this quote is something he or she needs to read and ponder. If written in lowercase letters, comedian Jim Carey's poetic quote may not affect the reader, thwarting my intent.

By leaving the CAPS LOCK key on, it is also easier for me to insert exclamation points - a punctuation with which I generously pepper my e-mails in order to highlight extra-important sections. Adding these exclamation points to my all-cap sentences is like shoving a gun barrel into the reader's mouth: it forces them to pay attention. And still, even written in all-caps and chock full of exclamation points, my e-mails are as aesthetically appealing as a handwritten note penned in calligraphy.

Oh, and when I'm Instant Messaging a friend or coworker, you guessed it: my CAPS LOCK button never comes close to getting turned off. Especially in the small, confined window of an IM, capital letters are just plain larger than lowercase. It's like they say: bigger is better.

There's one more way my all-cap e-mails demand attention: I send them twice. That's right, I send the whole e-mail twice. Yes, I know this seems unnecessary, but I think it politely reminds the recipient that my e-mail is important and needs to be read immediately. If I've taken the time to send the e-mail twice, they owe it to me to at least read it once!

What always puzzles me is that some people write entire e-mails or Instant Messages without using any capital letters - can you believe that? Who is going to be psychologically persuaded into reading that? I'll bet the people who use all lowercase letters in their e-mails are the same people who still use a hyphen when numerically indicating the date of the year. I mean really, which catches the eye more: 9-27-98 or 9.27.98?

Still, it bothers me when people reply to my all-cap e-mails by themselves using all capital letters. Don't they know that this is the defining characteristic of my electronic correspondence? If they want to come up with their own font signature - say for instance, typing in all italics or all bold - that's fine. But I sure wish they'd respect my pioneering method of communicating in an attention-grabbing way, and click off their CAPS LOCK. Maybe I'll send these copycats an e-mail asking them to quit - TYPED IN ALL CAPS!