waving android

I am currently a software engineer at Google, where as a member of the Android platform team I build frameworks and user interfaces.

The blog here at is mostly historical; you can find more recent posts on .

Some thoughts on case.

July 8th, 2002

Some thoughts on case.

No, not the case of Corona I have all to myself thanks to the ill
favor it finds in my other housemates (comprised now of the
standard complement of Erin and three tiny jungle felines). No,
I’m talking about lettercase (as in, “do I take the little lead letter
slugs from the upper case or the lower one?”).

I’ve stopped using title case altogether. Even (especially) in
titles. I feel like sentence case, combined with some other
typographical method of indicating emphasis (such as the ever-popular
boldface), delivers a much more satisfying,
turn-of-the-(nineteenth-)century feel. It works well in stand-alone headings,
as well as paragraph run-ins (such as the one that leads this very
paragraph).

Title case just rubs me the wrong way; somehow, capitalizing Every Damn
Word seems just as aggressive to me as the ENDURINGLY ANNOYING ALL
UPPERCASE TECHNIQUE, WITH THE SHOUTING, ETC. Further, there are strange
exceptions when trying to “properly” use title case — capitalize
each word, but not articles or prepositions, unless they’re “important”,
for some heretofore unspecified value of “important”, &c. &c.

It occurs to me that if you ever catch me using title case, I’m almost
definitely using it sardonically. Not unlike the way These Guys™ use it.

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