CAPS In Email - 4th Sept

Recently, I found a news where a woman got fired from her company as she often used CAPITAL letters in her email. According to the company, the emails were found to be confrontational and provocative. Here's the full news below, taken from My Fox New York:-

========== by Mike Brody

(MYFOX NATIONAL) - An accountant in New Zealand has been awarded NZD$17,000 (US$11,500) for unfair dismissal after her boss fired her without warning for using uppercase letters in an e-mail to co-workers.

ProCare Health fired Vicki Walker in December 2007 after complaints from colleagues about e-mail messages in which text was in bold type, red type or capitalized, according to the New Zealand Herald .

The specific e-mail which led to the firing advised her team how to fill out staff claim forms, specified a time and date highlighted in bold red, and had a sentence written in all capital letters and highlighted in bold blue. It stated: "To ensure your staff claim is processed and paid, please do follow the below checklist."

Her boss deemed the capital letters too confrontational for her co-workers to read after they woke up from naptime. Writing a message in capital letters is widely held to be the equivalent of shouting.

Walker said she had to take out a second mortgage on her home and borrow money in order to pay her bills over the past two years. She also said she plans to appeal to the Employment Relations Authority for further compensation.

"To say that [e-mail] is confrontational is ridiculous," Walker told the Herald. "I have spent thousands defending myself and there are so many issues that are unresolved that I want to take them up on."

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Looking at the email, I feel angry although she didn't mean to make me feel that.

It is in my opinion that using capital letters are akin to shouting and anger. Although, some say it is used to show emphasis. Emphasis of a particular word or sentence in the online world can be done using either italics, bold or a simple *emphasis*. Whats with the capital letters? Read this:-

THE EMAIL IS ANNOYING compared to The email is annoying.

I myself feel that the former gives an impression of total annoyance while the other is more of a statement. In the world of email and online text, especially in the business world, there is no proper way to show displeasure besides using capital letters for all the words. Proper email etiquette should be followed, similar to HERE .