[Sub-Driver]

Just think of the millions saved!

We're GREEN!

[The KG9 Kid]

THE WORLD WONDERS

[Riley]

“Air raid. Pearl Harbor. This is not a drill.”

Doesn’t have the same...note.

[SueRae]

Oh puh-leeze. Is this what constitutes a priority now for the Navy that it warrants a press release on the subject?

Such sad times we find ourselves in.

[bigbob]

“now hear this”

Yeah, that’ll work

[Chode]

younger recipients of all-cap messages might tend to think that the person sending them was SCREAMING AT THEM AND REALLY TICKED OFF.

poor babies... bunch of over sensitive hot house flowers

[SampleMan]

All caps were obsolete in 1995 (end of electronic scanning), and that format was always a pain in the ass to read, and often confusing. It only took 20 years to move on.

[Drango]

NO!

[oldbill]

Actually, CAPS were used originally because teletype machines for crypto work only had caps and later on the early computers were built around six-bit codes that limited the number of characters, numbers, and symbols to 64. Since most coded messages were in blocks of letters, like SDAAW SSNKL QWHHJ, it reduced ambiguities and confusion to use caps. For example, small letters like q, p, g could be easily misread on old typewriters and teletypes when the ribbons dried up.

[Riley]

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.

It's the Navy. It is screaming at them and really ticked off.

[Conspiracy Guy]

.SDRAWKCAB DNA SPAC LLA ETAH I

[EveningStar]

Capital idea!

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

Now, we just need weather services to follow suit. The use of all-caps goes back to TeleType days, and telegraph messages before that. The technology for using lower-case letters too has been around for decades now. Using all-caps seems to have just become a habit -- or even an actual cultural "meme". Change is overdue.

Some people think all-caps is like SHOUTING! It's also very difficult to read a large amount of ALL-CAPS TEXT. Most adults don't read words letter-by-letter -- they "read" the whole word by its shape. The words in ALL-CAPS are mainly simple rectangles, so the shape of the whole word doesn't help you read it. OTOH, lower-case words can be read by their shape alone -- you don't need to see the individual letters. Reading lower-case is faster and easier than ALL-CAPS. (I know there is some controversy about why this is -- but, people do read mixed-case text faster than ALL-CAPS.)

[Billthedrill]

RIDICULOUS. TTY MACHINES DON’T USE LOWER CASE FOR THE SAME REASON REAL MEN DON’T ASK FOR DIRECTIONS - BECAUSE THEY DON’T NEED TO. WHAT THE HECK HAS HAPPENED TO MY NAVY INTERROGATIVE. THESE YOUNG PUNKS ARE EVEN TRYING TO FLY AEROPLANES OFF THE DECKS OF PERFECTLY GOOD DREADNOUGHTS. RIDICULOUS. EOT.

[napscoordinator]

After all those messages I typed for 24 years....Yeah! lol.

[Cvengr]

Semaphore to now only use one flag!

Morse Code reduced to only dots!

Aldis Lamp to now operate without any shutter!

[logi_cal869]

NOW it makes sense:

It’s the OLD SALTS that do the all caps in the forums I visit...

[logic101.net]

Gezz, when I was a 70250B in the USAF messages were enough of a pain without having to worry about upper and lower case! Really that was the only up side; everything else was so particular. Ok, then again anything typed in my squadron was really particular now that I think about it!

[Boogieman]

“There are still a couple of legacy systems out there that we’ll have to convert,” probably in mid-2014, Holstead said.

---

Uh oh. That sounds like the beginning of a B-movie disaster plot to me. Don’t worry, just a few legacy systems, like the launch program for the warheads aboard the nuclear submarines...

[jimfree]

Amazing. I retired 20 years ago; hard to believe it took that long.

[JRios1968]