“ALL-CAPS”, Yonathan A. Arbel, Andrew Toler2020-11-02 (typography, law, writing psychology; backlinks)⁠:

A hallmark of consumer contracts is their use of long blocks of capitalized text. These “all-caps” clauses are meant to alert consumers to nonstandard, risky, or important aspects of the transaction that would otherwise be hidden in the fine print. Based on a belief in the power of all-caps, courts will often deny enforcement of many key terms—such as warranty disclaimers, liability releases, arbitration clauses, and automatic billing—unless they are presented in all-caps.

We collect evidence from standard form agreements used by the largest companies in the United States and find that, despite its limitations, 3⁄4^th of consumer contracts contain at least one all-caps paragraph.

This article is the first to empirically examine the effectiveness of all-caps. Using an experimental methodology, the article finds that:

all-caps fail to appreciably improve consent. Moreover, some evidence suggests that all-caps are harmful to older consumers.

Based on these findings and other evidence reported here, this article lays out the dangers and risks of continued reliance on all-caps and calls for abandoning all-caps.

…we are the first to study block capitalization in the consumer contract context. A surprisingly small and fairly dated body of research studied the legibility of capital letters, originating with the work of Miles A. Tinker [Legibility of Print, Tinker1963]. This research focuses mostly on legibility—rather than notice or understanding—and has ambiguous implications for contracts. In general, it finds that capitalized letters are more perceptible and read more accurately, although they tend to slow down reading speeds and are not well liked by readers.⁸ In terms of application, one study finds that patients can more accurately distinguish drug names if part of the name is capitalized.⁹ However, the applicability of these studies to the modern consumer contract context is quite limited. Perceptibility at a distance plays a minor role and slow reading times may actually prove advantageous, with slower reading encouraging greater attention and deliberation. The research is also very dated, which raises special concerns given changing norms in print, reading habit, and printing technology. The key question of whether all-caps improve notice—and thus assent—was left open, which is possibly why this research was mostly ignored by courts and legislators.

See Also:

• Causal and Associational Linking Language From Observational Research and Health Evaluation Literature in Practice: A systematic language evaluation

• The Voluntariness of Voluntary Consent: Consent Searches and the Psychology of Compliance

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