Wow, after complaining so much about blogging, this is my third post in a row. I’m becoming even more nerdy. Ah well.

I thought I’d bring up the subject of good typography practice, particularly in headlines. Too often now we seen overly long headlines and worse still all in capital letters.

It’s much easier to read a short headline in lowercase or even sentence case than it is ALL IN CAPITALS.

Did you know the brain registers lower case type much quicker than it does capitals? Did you know that the letters don’t even have to be in the same order?

As long as the first and last characters are correct your brain can still quickly decipher the text.

Here’s a good example:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

You shouldn’t create headlines all in capitals, and worse still, whole paragraphs in capitals; it just registers on the brain as rectangles and makes it that much more difficult to read.