A.M. LIGHT SIDE: A capital offense?

In Wednesday’s Opinion section of the newspaper, there were several

words spread over the 10 letters to the editor in which every single

letter was capitalized in the middle of the sentence to make the word

stand out.

That’s certainly nothing new, as it’s an old trick for letter writers

to add all capped words to emphasize points, and you'll see that Friday’s letters offer a similar batch of big-lettered exclamation points.

The most common capped words are constitution, flag, patriot, and very likely, socialist.

But this begs a few questions. Are these writers yelling at the

readers? If they were speaking what they wrote with someone over

dinner, would they shout the same points?

Assuming the answer is yes, and yelling — even page yelling — isn’t

the most civilized way to communicate, should the newspaper try to

profit off of it as a way to discourage it?

For example, it would cost 50 cents per all cap, plus another 50

cents for each enhanced feature, such as bold font, italics, or any

combination.

So, CONSTITUTION would run the writer $6, but by adding fancy features, an all capped CONSTITUTION with artistic features could cost the writer $18. Would page yellers be willing to pony up?

- Tom Hasslinger