When all capitals is the right choice
Capitals have a few jobs where nothing else works as well:
- Acronyms and initialisms such as NASA, HTML or USB, when you have typed them in lower case.
- Warning and safety labels, and defined terms in contracts, which are often set in capitals so they stand out.
- Short headings, buttons and badges in designs that use capitals as a style.
- Forms that ask for block capitals, and older systems or databases that store text only in capitals.
- Constants in code. For a name made of several words, use CONSTANT_CASE from the style row, which adds the underscores.
When it is the wrong choice
Long passages set in capitals are generally slower to read. In messages and posts, capitals are also widely read as shouting. Keep them for short pieces of text.
If you only want text to look capitalized on a web page, do not retype it. Keep the original and add the CSS rule text-transform: uppercase. The page stays easy to edit, and the underlying text is not changed.
Making text uppercase in other tools
- Excel and Google Sheets:
=UPPER(A1)returns the cell in capitals. - Microsoft Word: select the text and use the Change Case button on the Home tab.
- JavaScript:
text.toUpperCase(). Python:text.upper(). SQL:UPPER(column).
Those functions follow the same Unicode rules as this page, so ß becomes SS there too. For several styles at once, or for a whole list line by line, the case converter shows all of them side by side.