Posted on 06/06/2013 5:20:20 PM PDT by Sub-Driver
Navy Scuttles All-Cap Messages By Michael Hoffman Thursday, June 6th, 2013 5:30 pm Posted in Naval
WE DON’T HAVE TO SEND MESSAGES THIS WAY ANYMORE, the Navy has decided.
Word went out from the Navy’s Fleet Cyber Command on May 8 that the Navy’s internal messaging system now had the ability to transmit in lower case as well as the traditional upper case letters.
“Therefore, it is not necessary to limit Navy messages entirely to upper case,” said the directive, first reported by the Navy Times. Of course, the message saying that upper case was no longer needed went out this way: “THEREFORE, IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO LIMIT NAVY MESSAGES ENTIRELY TO UPPER CASE.”
Alone among the services, the Navy has been using all capitals for internal administrative messages from the routine to the emergency going back more than a century to the days when teletype machines only sent capitals.
The reasoning behind the change was that messages in lower and upper case were easier to read, Navy officials said. Another factor was that younger recipients of all-cap messages might tend to think that the person sending them was SCREAMING AT THEM AND REALLY TICKED OFF.
“The capability has been there for about a year” to send routine messages in lower case, said Lt. Joseph Holstead, a spokesman for the Cyber Command. The next step will be to expand that capability to secret and top secret messages, possibly in August, Holstead said.
“There are still a couple of legacy systems out there that we’ll have to convert,” probably in mid-2014, Holstead said.
WHAT DID YA SAY ?
OH BOY! NOW NAVY MESSAGES CAN CONTAIN ADDED EMPHASIS!
...Or ever had involvement with engineering or architectural drawings.
You did.
I was referring to those first computerized applications that used the six bit 64 character byte (A B 8 4 2 1) that was also the basis for IBM punched cards and paper tape machines.
A FORCE FOR GOOD.
Was that EBCIDIC (sp?)
Not quite.
Here’s a summary.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBCDIC
There was a 5-bit code that all letters had two “1”s and three “0”s. It allowed an accuracy check of each letter because you could verify by checking if it only had two bits. 01010 11000 10001 10100, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-out-of-five_code
Thanks for the info
Yep. At least it was 20 years ago. If someone tried to give me an order without yelling I probably wouldn't have known how to react.
I always hear that argument. Maybe they are, but I can't say that I found reading all caps all that difficult. But then look at me-I'm the guy that was so used to all caps I did it to my handle without thinking when I signed up.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.