Grammar Girl: For Writers and Language Lovers. WHY WE USE ALL CAPS TO SHOUT, with Glenn Fleishman
Feb 19, 2026
Glenn Fleishman, a technology historian and author who studies the history of type and printing, discusses how all-capitals moved from a mark of importance to a way to indicate shouting. He traces early newspaper and typesetting practices, digs into 19th-century sources, and shows how online communities codified the convention.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Why Capitals Felt More Important
- Uppercase historically signaled importance because capitals were visually bigger and distinct from lowercase.
- The rise of larger headline type in the 1800s changed capitals from purely practical to a design choice with rhetorical effect.
Technology Drove Headline Style
- Technical limits once prevented casting very large metal type, so printers used all capitals to make text seem larger.
- New wood type and casting methods in the 1800s enabled true large headlines and shifted the meaning of caps.
Researching Typographic Conventions
- Tracing typographic meanings relies on finding people discussing conventions, because direct searches for symbols are hard.
- By the time people explicitly describe a convention, it has already become established in use.
