SOMETIME AFTER 1984
BICAMERAL SCRIPT HAS BEEN AROUND FOR CENTURIES THOUGH THE RULES FOR ITS USE HAVE ONLY SOLIDIFIED IN THE LAST FEW HUNDRED YEARS. WHILE PRINTED MATERIAL WAS ABLE TO USE BOTH UPPER AND LOWER CASE, THE NEED FOR EFFICIENCY IN TELEGRAPH COMMUNICATIONS MEANT THERE WAS AN ERA WHEN AL...
THESE DAYS, SPACING IS A FEATURE OF VAPORWAVE AND SYNTHWAVE ART GENRES TO EMPHASISE A E S T H E T I C QUALITIES. NEW TRENDS ON THE INTERNET CHANGE REGULARLY THE WAY WE COMMUNICATE ON THE INTERNET.
*** * ***** * ***** ***** ********* *** ******** *** **** ****** ****** ** ****** ** ******** **** ****... (For a while I tried using asterisks for emphasis, but then people seemed to ignore my messages even more...)
I think you have the history wrong, here. You claim that lower case letters only came about because of personal computers with higher screen resolutions, but lower-case letters were in ASCII from the beginning, which was 1963. (Also, another answer buts the date as some time before 1984.)
@DavidRicherby either they weren't, or it weren't their default settings. It means that around the beginning of the 80's, most of screens were able and most common os switch their settings to display lower case. Then the full caps became the "SHOUTING" thing.
@phresnel The problem with using spacing is that people can't delimit the words, so they end up reading "ass houting". Was that a typo and you meant "outing"? Or "hooting"? Or is "houting" really a word? Or was it not a word before, but it's something the kids have just thought up and you're behind the slang curve? Argh!
@TobiaTesan Which raises an interesting question. Once you've gone to all caps for Brian-Blessed-ness, how do you escalate from there to the volume required to tell a polar bear to "FUCK OFF", after you've "punched it right in its fucking face" (quoting the man himself)?
Don't tell me we're going to have a meta site post now raising a question on whether all-caps can be used in certain situations and where to draw the line...
I recall that George Bernard Shaw used spacing for emphasis in his plays, so that convention is much older. It was one of his idiosyncrasies, along with spelling "show" as "shew" and omitting the apostrophe in contractions and possessives ("cant", "dont", "shes", ...)
@NateEldredge Yeah, there's lots of examples earlier than 1984. I took the question as when was all-caps widely agreed to be not just a literary device for yelling, but vulgar shouting. That there is still discussion in 1984 suggests the matter was not settled.
On the 16th of March 1984, Erik E. Fair said “Capitalising whole words gives the impression that you’re shouting”. I think we all need to hail the hero who bought us this system.
@Krumia Yes, all caps was used as yelling as a literary device for at least decades earlier. I'm answering when it was generally accepted, the 1984 discussion indicates it was not, and further when it went from a literary device to vulgar shouting. I'll make this more clear.
@DavidRicherby The uppercase-only character set goes back to teletypes (and probably even before that to Morse code, which also didn't have any provisions for case). Because at the time, modem technology was not very well developed yet, they used a five-bit character set to both speed up transmission and reduce the chance of transmission errors.
If a convention was used by the same author who set a book in the future in 1984, then it is not a convention that only came into being after 1984: “Comrades,” he said quietly, “do you know who is responsible for this? Do you know the enemy who has come in the night and overthrown our windmill? SNOWBALL!” he suddenly roared in a voice of thunder.
@JonHanna Yes, all-caps has been selectively used for emphasis and yelling for decades before 1984. I interpreted the question as not about selective use of all-caps, but all-all-caps, when it was generally accepted, and in particular went from literary convention to considered vulgar.
Discussion on answer by Schwern: When…
Discussion on answer by Schwern: When…