The 160-Year History of ALL CAPS as Shouting and Its Cultural Decline

The convention of using ALL CAPS to indicate shouting is over 160 years old, first documented in an 1856 Washington D.C. Evening Star story. Printing historian Glenn Fleishman traced the practice in his 2017 book "Not To Put Too Fine a Point on It." The U.S. National Weather Service stopped using all-caps forecasts in 2016, acknowledging the shouting association. In the digital era, Dave Decot codified the convention in a 1984 post at Case Western Reserve University. Recent overuse by figures like President Trump has diluted its impact, leading to a cultural counter-response: lowercase writing as a sign of authenticity, seen in artists Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, and Charli XCX. In 2025, Bad Bunny's album "DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS" played with capitalization. Type designer Jamie Clarke of Bristol, U.K., created the typeface Reel to retain the visual weight of all-caps while adding lowercase personality, aiming for expressive rather than oppressive communication.