Put your hands over your ears. I’m under the weather and just did not feel like re-typing this message -as I always must– from the Chicago Apparel Industry Board Inc because they insist on sending out all of their missives in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. Normally, I retype their announcements so that they don’t look bad. Today I’m cranky enough to wonder why I care about their image when they do not.
If they used normal capitalization, I could do a simple copy and paste job. I tried to explain it to Lauren (at AIBI) but she says “I like capital letters, it gets my point across”. I’m not sure how effective all caps will continue to be if this is the last announcement I do for them; it’s not as though I get anything out of it. I mean, they don’t even link to me. Their director called me once, angrily complaining that I described the AIBI as a “fashion incubator” but if it quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck, it just might be a duck! But do I get any thanks? Why do I bother doing favors for people? Just to get yelled at -by phone and email? I need to have my head examined. Speaking of, I will be going to the doctor. After that, I’m taking two ibuprofens and going back to bed. I promise to be nicer the next time I come out to play.
———————-
THE APPAREL INDUSTRY BOARD, INC.
PRESENTS THE FALL 2006 – CHICAGO FABRIC AND TRIM SHOW.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 28TH – 9:00 A.M. – 5:00 P.M.
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29TH – 9:00 A.M. – 4:00 P.M.
AT THE HOLIDAY INN CHICAGO MART PLAZA
350 N. ORLEANS STREET, SAUGANASH BALLROOM, 14 TH FLOOR
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 60654
ATOP THE CHICAGO APPAREL CENTER
THIS IS THE SHOW THAT BRINGS COMPANIES FROM CALIFORNIA , TEXAS , NEW YORK, AND THE MIDWEST TO YOU AND IT IS FREE TO ATTEND.
TO PRE-REGISTER PLEASE FORWARD THE FOLLOWING TO aibi@aibi.com :
NAME:
COMPANY:
E-MAIL ADDRESS:
WEB-SITE:
ADDRESS:
CITY:
STATE:
ZIP:
PHONE:
FAX:
WHAT DO YOU PRODUCE?
TYPE OF BUSINESS:
YOUR TITLE/JOB FUNCTION:
PLEASE DO NOT FORGET TO BRING THE FOLLOWING WITH YOU TO THE SHOW:
-TAX IDENTIFICATION NUMBER
-STATE ISSUED PHOTO IDENTIFICATION.
-BUSINESS CARD
-PARKING TICKET; VALIDATION IS DONE WITHIN THE HOTEL.
PARKING:
DISCOUNTED SELF-PARKING AT $ 10. 00 PER VEHICLE IS AVAILABLE IN THE ATTACHED PARKING LOT OF THE HOLIDAY INN MART PLAZA LOCATED AT 350 N. ORLEANS STREET . IN ORDER TO RECEIVE THIS SPECIAL RATE PLEASE BRING YOUR PARKING TICKET WITH YOU TO THE SHOW.
THIS SHOW IS OPEN TO THE TRADE ONLY.
NO ONE UNDER THE AGE OF 18 ADMITTED.
Kathleen,
If you have InDesign or Illustrator, you can copy and paste the capital letters and then switch then to lower case or title case. In either the program, with the words highlighted, you click on “type” at the top and then click “change case” and choose which one you want to change it to. This might be possible in other programs, but I’ve only done it with these two.
Geh. Sympathies on feeling under-the-weather. Does this ‘PR’ person not realise that all caps is the online equivalent of shouting?
Hope you’re feeling better soon.
Well, the first thing they teach you in design of reading material is that lower-case is much easier to read than upper-case. There’s more variability in the letter size and shape, so words are more recognisable.
So no, using a less-readable type that your readership perceives as aggressive doesn’t get your point across. Unless your point is that you’re too lazy to use a shift key and you don’t care what people think of you.
If you cut and past into Microsoft Word you can set the case to Sentence Case and it will capitalise the beginning of sentences and put everything else in lower case. Makes it easier to clean up. Then you can cut and paste the cleaned up text into your post. (Other word processors probably have similar functions; MS Word happens to be the one my employer supplies me with.)
Yeah, it’s really upsetting to be put in the middle like that, being asked to pass on something that your clientèle will find obnoxious, for the benefit of your clientèle. But don’t fret, anyone interested in the Chicago Fabric and Trim show will make the effort and thank you for putting it out there.
On using MS Word. You actually have more options that “Sentence Case.” Copy & paste your all-CAPS text into a Word doc. Then take a look at “Format/Change Case” You’ll be able to highlight blocks of your text and (as Alison says) change it to “Sentence Case”. But you can also change it to “Title Case” (first letter of each word capitalized), “uppercase”, “lowercase” or even “togglecase” (for those times when you accidentally type with your caps lock “on” so that what is uppercase should be lowercase & vice-versa).
All of which will be easier than retyping their announcements!
Hope you feel better soon…
Alissa
Heh. Using all caps just makes them look computer illiterate, and their suggestion that it “gets the point across” only emphasizes that.
Oh well. Seems like some are stuck in the stone age and we should consider ourselves fortunate that they even bother to communicate at all!
On the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised by a recent encounter with a supplier of zippers who not only responded to my request, but sent me samples and happily responded to my questions over the phone. Hooray for that! Ours is a small business, for sure, but we’re growing, and if you’ll work with me I will happily give you my business, now and in the future.
Talk to Mike, at Midwest Trim:
http://www.midwest-trim.com/Our_Products.htm
:-)
Jeez, don’t people read a newb-FAQ anymore?
Here, AIBI, is the quintessential (though not for the easily offended) lecture on caps lock from The Best Page in the Universe.
I’m dizzy and lightheaded for no reason and the doc says that (and the irritability) is probably owing to low sodium altho waiting in his office for four hours -literally, no lie- did little to improve my temperment. I have to have some tests done and to drink sports drinks for supplementation. I’ve been training for a marathon and have been too stubborn to drink anything but water or club soda.
Doc also says I have two broken ribs (one of them in two places) that are stable from when I fell off of my bike two weeks ago. The doc agrees I didn’t need to have them taped up, that they don’t do that anymore. He didn’t say a word about me running with broken ribs altho I did stop running for a week after it happened because I was a little uncomfortable. This past saturday I did twelve miles and they only bothered me a little bit; the last two miles maybe. I don’t have an ear infection either (I had him check because my pain tolerance is so high that I wouldn’t know if I had one) and really, he was just humoring me since my temp was only 97, so I hope it is low sodium that is causing the dizziness because I am not the type to go running off to the doctor. Some alternative causes of dizziness and irritability are really nasty. Brain tumors come to mind. Those definitely make one dizzy and irritable, no?
Get well soon! or if I was the AIBI:
GET WELL SOON!
I hope you fell better soon. I has this crap a couple of weeks ago where I laid on my side of the bed. The room would spin or I would spin Im not sure. Gawd it was awful. I had to go to the dr. My hair was out of wack on the inside of one of my ears. I had never had this before.
I hope your ribs are all right.
There was a fabric show in N.Y.C. Stock exchange sent me the information to late. It does not matter I could not go anyway.
Judith-
Sounds like virtigo, which morphs into Meniere’s Disease at some undefinable boudary (at least in my non-doctor mind). My aunt and my roommate have varying degrees of it and I meet people more and more that have similar symptoms. Something like the “crystal” particals that float in your inner ear, making you feel balanced and know up from down get wacked out. The roommate went to a “balance specialist” and then a real docor, and the thing that helped her out was diaretics and a low sodium diet. Which is strange that it’s the opposite of what Kathleen’s doctor said, but for said roommate, she was retaining too much water, putting pressure on the inner ear. Wierd.
I’m with you 100% on the all caps issue, and let me add my rant: internal capitalization. Each word in a title, except perhaps the first one, does not need to be capitalized. Forget your 7th grade English teacher. Quotation marks, fonts, bold face, all can set off a title within a paragraph. Try it, and look at some newspapers that use the no-internal-caps as a headline style.
Add to that the penchant for capitalizing words such as “lean,” “kaizen,” “leadership,” etc. I see articles for “Lean Directions” (well, it’s SME style and I haven’t worked on changing it) that are so full of capital letters that it looks like an 18th century manuscript.
Writers should be charged a quarter every time they use a capital letter.
About vertigo – if it’s mild, just try a decongentant.
Hi Kathleen,
I’ve had vertigo myself- it can be effected by the position of your head. There are actually positions you can get into that will make the particles drift to the right place so you don’t have vertigo anymore. Try a google search for vertigo exercises and try them. They worked for me. My physician told me about them.
I hope you are feeling better soon!
Hope you feel better! You are one tough cookie to go running with broken ribs!
Hi Karen. On internal capitalization. I think the value of internal capitalization depends on the context in which it is used. If you will always have control of the appearance of your writing, then using another font or boldface or even italics can be a nice substitute. Or if you’re talking about a marketing or other short piece where the capitalized term will only be used once, or it is used as a title, then quotation marks can serve nicely.
However. If you are doing a long piece where (in order to avoid repeating either long text strings or described concepts) you create defined terms that you will use throughout the rest of the document to represent that long text string or concept (a “Defined Term”), then to avoid ambiguity or confusion (when the word which you’ve utilized as a defined term when capitalized is also used in a context where the secondary meaning you’ve assigned to it is not intended), internal capitalization is the best approach. You need to clearly indicate when the Defined Term you’ve selected “stands in” for the longer text string or concept.
The major advantage of internal capitals is that they will survive many of the reformatting attempts text can be subject to (everything except a change to an all-caps font, that is). Bold type can be lost, italics can be lost, but the initial caps seem to persist. I realize that quotation marks will also persist, but in text that is heavy in such Defined Terms, they can become annoying nearly beyond belief. It has also become customary (at least in legal documents) to utilize quotation marks when creating a Defined Term.
So consider the context when decrying internal capitalization, please! ;-)
Alissa
Feel better soon. When I had heat exhaustion this summer I was woozy from low sodium too – Gatoraide and rest took care of it.
Take care – and heal quickly!
Kathleen;
Do NOT repost this or I will hunt you down.
The Apparel Industry Board is run by a bunch of incompetent old women who don’t know not to type in all caps, never will and couldn’t care less. In fact, I am sure they are shocked the typewriter has been replaced by the computer. They have no style, taste or grasp on current fashion reality. Someone here in Chicago needs to form a coup and take over! It’s time for them to play bridge at the country club and leave fashion to people who ‘get’ it.
You should have seen the fashion show they put on during our fashion week. Unreal. It was truly frightening.
I split my gut reading this. Wait, or as they would say…I SPLIT MY GUT READING THIS.
I hope you get well soon. I get light headed and dizzy from stress. I’ve been in and out of the dentist the past few weeks and I’ve been miserable not being able to do much but I’m over all that now. Sitting here with a wad of gauze in my mouth not being able to eat.
Nice to find out who’s running the Chicago Apparel Industry Board Inc. he says with sarcasm.
Kathleen, I didn’t know you were sick! I hope you are back on your feet soon. When I started doing hot yoga last year (you literally sweat bucketsful) I had to switch to Gatorade because I was unable to hydrate enough with water. I resisted for a long time – feeling woozy all the time is no fun.
I refuse to even read anything that is all caps. I hate being shouted at.
Re: internal caps. If a writer or editor is claiming to be competent at all, they use a style manual to stanardize things like caps, punctuation, etc. Most style books (all of the ones I’m familiar with, Chicago, Modern Language Assn., APA, even the Associate Press) still agree with your 7th grade English teacher about capitalizing all the major words in a title or a proper name. I’m going to go out on a limb and declare myself in favor of preserving time honored and well-established standards and conventions of literate, written English. (Or any other language.)
Re: Chicago AIB’s all caps. Obnoxious. And what a dumb answer. I’m looking for a job and I’m in Chicago and it’s not the first time I’ve thought it a terrible injustice that someone that as silly as ALL CAPS BABE manages to keep one when finding one is such a trial. At risk of offending, it’s my experience that publicity people as a group are only marginally competent at most things.
Well, the AIBI isn’t all bad. I’ve been attending their seminars lately and finding them very informative, though I am getting the distinct impression that business in Chicago in the apparel industry is not as good as it ought to be. Still, it is great to have an organization in Chicago dedicated to helping the industry grow. Speaking of which, there’s also Chicago Fashion Foundation; anyone know more about them?
Erin-
I knew I had vertigo. I was just to lazy to go find the dictionary to look up the spelling. I did not want to spell it wrong. I just said the sypmtoms instead. Im not a very good speller.
Sarita,
The Chicago Fashion Foundation, while indeed started by younger women with a lot more taste than AIG, is still fairly young and not as powerful as say, the Chicago Fashion Group International. I question what CFF really does. There is also the mayor’s new fashion initiative council…the Fashion Focus Council in which real players in Chicago fashion sit. Oh and GenArt.