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Woman Fired For Using Uppercase In Email
tomachi writes "An accountant in NZ has been awarded $17,000 NZD for unfair dismissal after her boss fired her without warning for using uppercase letters in a single email to co-workers. The email, which advises her team how to fill out staff claim forms, specifies a time and date highlighted in bold red, and a sentence written in capitals and highlighted in bold blue. It reads: 'To ensure your staff claim is processed and paid, please do follow the below checklist.' Her boss deemed the capital letters too confrontational for her co-workers to read after they woke up from naptime."
I work IT at a home nursing business, and I get work tickets submitted all the time. The nurses and office coordinators use software that -- don't ask me why -- requires them to use all capital letters when entering patient visit notes and ordering medications. They leave the CAPS LOCK key on all the time as part of their professional work, and are so used to it that it doesn't stand out when they use it in other contexts.
You learn to live with it.
Actually the reason for all caps in legal documents is that certain parts of the text are required to have greater visual emphasis relative to the rest of the document, as they tend to be the important parts. If you're working in plain text then all caps is your only option.
I'm sure that the fact that all caps is harder to read hasn't escaped the notice of these bloodsuckers either.