My Treatise On Bazaar EtiquetteFollow

Obviously it does not hurt anyone. That is not the point. Chat rules are like camp rules...there is no set rule but instead are made by the users. Chat rules and generally accepted practices in chat have existed far longer than EQ.

For many years now typing in all caps has been considered a shout or yell...usually in a conversation. You can get kicked out of many moderated chat rooms and forums for insisting on all-cap chatting.

The reason is simple...in chat situation, emotion and inflection cannot be conveyed as in normal speech. The use of caps helps clarify certain things. For example...lets say I want to tell you that I camped a mob all day long and want to emphasize the all day part...I type "I camped the cyclops ALL DAY long." Now you know by reading that that all day was the key element that I am discussing...not the camping or the mob but the frequency of the mob. In normal dialog you pick up on these things subconsciously. In chat you need prompts.

Now, lets say we are dicussing something and I am unable to get my point accross to you, then all of the sudden you see "DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND, I CAMPED HIM ALL DAY LONG!!!". Now you know from the change to caps that I am yelling my point to you, or at least emphasizing this fact. You can react accordingly.

If someone uses all caps all of the time it errodes the generally accepted practice of caps = emphasis. If one person starts typing in all caps, two things happen... 1) readers are unable to determine if there is emphasis intended or not...sometimes this becomes apparent by subject matter but not always. 2)...and this is the critical one, others feel the need to compete so they start typing in all caps. Pretty soon everyone is in caps and the subtle yet very real ability to convey emphsis in typed conversation has been erroded.

Does one person typing in all caps cause this? Not usually, but they can cause others to do it too and soon it does become a problem.

And then finally, it is considered yelling. If I yelled at you all the time, you would tell me to stop, whether it hurt you or not. It is not pleasant and you do not need to put up with it. It only stands to reason that if typing in caps has come to mean emphasis and yelling then if someone is constantly chat-yelling, others will be sensitive to it and complain or ask them to stop. Chatting is a true form of communication, and the only one we really have in Norrath, so it does require some basic courtesy and etiquette just as any other form of communication does.

I know this is basic and most people understnad this without the over-drawn explaination...but the question was asked so I had to supply an answer.