Talk:alternating caps

vowels and consonants
Wikipedia suggests that an early form of this was not random capitalization, but rather with vowels in one case and consonants the other. The link is down now, but I didnt check Internet Archive, or search anything else. I used to type with capitalized consonants (e.g. i'M iN HiGH SCHooL), and although I actually got the idea from seeing Arabic words spelled this way to highlight the roots (e.g. KaTaBa), I suspect I was reinforced by seeing other people type words with consonants mostly overhanging the vowels rather than using pure random capitalization. To some extent this may have been due to the BBS practice that Wikipedia mentions, and to some extent because  it just looks better since consonants draw our attention. Another form of the style may have been to strictly switch case after every character, which would be truer to the name of alternating caps, and this is still not the same as random capitalization.

I also remember seeing this writing style called azn, or perhaps aZN or aZn, though I dont think it was specifically the vowel/consonant style, and Im not sure if it referred specifically to alternating caps, random caps, or to mixed case styles in general. — Soap — 10:57, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Like my recent post about triple parens, it is impossible to search for the distinction between the various substyles of alternating caps because case-sensitive search engines disappeared from the Internet a long time ago. I will at least try to make some attempt to turn up more information, perhaps if I can locate an early guide to Internet etiquette, for example, where the style would have been something new and unfamiliar, needing explanation. — Soap — 10:57, 28 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Consonant-only capitals were used in w:Spümcø, an animation studio founded in 1989. It may be that alternating caps sporadically existed before Internet access became widely available. — Soap — 08:19, 5 September 2023 (UTC)