Subject: Proper Caps versus Small Caps

From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 11:53:40 +0300 (IDT)

It seems that some people use all small caps for their E-mails while
others use properly large caps. I personally know of someone who used to
use small caps and later switched to proper caps.

I remember I once saw my friend use all large caps in an E-mail he wrote.
I told him using large caps was bad netiquette and was considered
shouting. So he switched from large caps to small caps. (somewhat like
from the fire to the firing pan if you ask me).

I once talked with an old friend from high school who also studies in the
Technion. He used small caps with lots of typos and abbreviations.
Eventually I told him that I could not read what he wrote and that he
should write more formally. He switched, but had a lot of typos, and
eventually reverted.

I use proper caps because I believe that writing E-mails deserves the same
attention and mental effort as writing any other formal letters. That and
I'm used to using the shift key.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        [email-masked]
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Home E-mail:       [email-masked]

"Let's suppose you have a table with 2^n cups..."
"Wait a second - is n a natural number?"

---

From: "Eliran" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 18:06:44 +0200

The jargon file has something in it that says that some hackers write in
small
caps because they programmed "too much". :-)

Nice thought.

---

From: Oleg Goldshmidt <[email-masked]>
Date: 13 Aug 2002 21:26:31 +0300

Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]> writes:

> It seems that some people use all small caps for their E-mails 

You can't use small caps in ascii emails. Small caps is a font. E.g.
same the following LaTeX snippet in sc.tex, then do

$ latex sc
$ dvips -o sc.ps sc
$ gv sc.ps

to see what it looks like.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}

This is normal capitalization.

THIS IS SHOUTING.

{\sc This is small caps.}

\end{document}

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

-- 
Oleg Goldshmidt | [email-masked] 
=================================================================
"... Of theoretical physics and programming, programming embodied 
the greater intellectual challenge." [E.W.Dijkstra, 1930 - 2002.]

---

From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 08:24:44 +0300 (IDT)

> same the following LaTeX snippet in sc.tex, then do

Small Caps is a way of writing in which you write all the letters that
should be capital letters as lowercase. E.g:

<<<
i went to dr. rabinovich and he told me to use linux more often.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> [email-masked]
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>

---

From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 11:18:58 +0300

> should be capital letters as lowercase. E.g:

No, Shlomi, you got the terms wrong. I wasn't going to correct you, but
now that you're arguing with Oleg about it...

Small Caps is a font where the lowercase letters are smaller capital letters.

If you write all your sentense in captial letters (uppercase), or all in
lowercase letters, you can call it all-caps (or all-uppercase), or
all-lowercase.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |       Thursday, Aug 15 2002, 7 Elul 5762
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |A Nobel Peace Prize? I would KILL for one
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |of those.

---

From: Oleg Goldshmidt <[email-masked]>
Date: 15 Aug 2002 08:42:12 +0300

Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]> writes:

> should be capital letters as lowercase. 

I suggest you check your facts. It's a font where lower case letters
look similar to capital letters, but smaller, and with slightly
different proportions.