Timeline for Why do some users complete forms all in capital letters?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
44 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jul 3, 2017 at 16:29 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| Jul 3, 2017 at 17:17 | |||||
| Dec 17, 2014 at 9:01 | comment | added | zigojacko | Because they don't know where the CAPS key is! | |
| Dec 17, 2014 at 0:03 | comment | added | Steve Bennett | 50%? Two or more capital letters in a row is ENough to indicate a problem. | |
| S Dec 16, 2014 at 15:35 | history | suggested | Eliza Wilson | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Improved formatting, clarified meaning
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| Dec 16, 2014 at 15:25 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Dec 16, 2014 at 15:35 | |||||
| Dec 16, 2014 at 4:38 | answer | added | msh210 | timeline score: 4 | |
| Dec 16, 2014 at 4:18 | comment | added | mgarciaisaia | They might have filled the forms on October 22nd... | |
| Dec 15, 2014 at 18:49 | history | edited | Rich Andrews | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
deleted 13 characters in body
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| Dec 15, 2014 at 18:48 | comment | added | Paul Gessler | You haven't mentioned the geographic location of your users, but one other possible explanation (for US users at least) is that the United States Postal Service recommends all-caps (and no punctuation) for addresses on postal mail. | |
| Dec 15, 2014 at 18:43 | history | edited | Rich Andrews | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added my solution
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| Dec 15, 2014 at 18:19 | comment | added | Aryeh Leib Taurog | Probably not relevant to your case, but this is really common here in Israel. I get all-caps emails frequently from insurance agents, lawyers, accountants, etc. For a while, I thought it was really annoying, but at some point the reason occurred to me: the standard Hebrew keyboard layout includes the upper case Latin characters. Bilingual users can manage easily JUST BY HOLDING DOWN SHIFT. THEY MIGHT NOT EVEN REALIZE THEY"RE SHOUTING (HEBREW HAS ONLY ONE CASE). To get lower case Latin, they would have to switch layouts, which they may not know how to do. | |
| Dec 15, 2014 at 2:54 | comment | added | Zan Lynx | As a guy who has done data entry in the past I want forms to be consistent and fast. Consistent! I want to go through a list of items as fast as possible. I don't want to read anything. I don't want questions. I don't want mysterious system delays. I want entry, Tab, entry, Tab, entry, Tab, DONE! Pow, next form. | |
| Dec 14, 2014 at 4:30 | comment | added | Hot Licks | The behavior comes from filling out lots of forms (especially paper forms). Especially for people who work with certain types of paper forms, filling out everything in upper-case becomes second nature. | |
| Dec 14, 2014 at 1:35 | comment | added | Thomas | In france when asked for full name it is conventional to write your family name in all caps after your given name i.e. "John DOE" (or, in some official documents, before, i.e. "DOE, John"). | |
| Dec 13, 2014 at 14:55 | vote | accept | Rich Andrews | ||
| Dec 13, 2014 at 14:37 | comment | added | Rich Andrews | @toolkit unfortunately there is a specific requirement to have the real name salutation. Interestingly this comes from the business relationship managers who have canvased opinion with the users. Although clearly not the minority that actually use all caps! | |
| Dec 13, 2014 at 8:16 | history | protected | JonW♦ | ||
| Dec 13, 2014 at 2:03 | answer | added | mckenzm | timeline score: 4 | |
| Dec 13, 2014 at 1:52 | answer | added | Makyen | timeline score: 68 | |
| Dec 12, 2014 at 23:06 | comment | added | xeor | @DavidConrad I see them as harder to read if they are in a sentence, and I haveto read a lot of them. The eyes glides more easily over lowercase letters. However, I do prefer reading stuff like serial-codes, or passcodes in upper-case, since I need to read (and parse in my head), one letter at the time. So; lowercase makes sense for sentences, uppercase makes sense for character-by-character reading. They really are easier to distinguish... :) | |
| Dec 12, 2014 at 23:00 | comment | added | toolkit | I would assume most people believe their name and address are to be used in the header section onwhere all caps is the convention. Why not account for that by using the name and address as they are intended, and sticking with Dear Sir/Madam in the content? | |
| Dec 12, 2014 at 19:13 | comment | added | Mateo | Are these also billing addresses, I know I've seen places say "Exactly as it is on the card" for billing addresses, and any credit/debit card I have has the name in all caps. | |
| Dec 12, 2014 at 18:49 | answer | added | user312854 | timeline score: 4 | |
| Dec 12, 2014 at 18:33 | comment | added | David Conrad | @xeor I don't believe that's true, that upper case letters are easier to distinguish, and in fact I believe I've seen a study that shows the contrary although I don't have a reference at hand. | |
| Dec 12, 2014 at 18:15 | answer | added | David42 | timeline score: 19 | |
| Dec 12, 2014 at 17:57 | answer | added | DA01 | timeline score: 7 | |
| Dec 12, 2014 at 16:02 | answer | added | DanielST | timeline score: 10 | |
| Dec 12, 2014 at 15:28 | answer | added | MonkeyZeus | timeline score: 14 | |
| Dec 12, 2014 at 14:48 | answer | added | DQdlM | timeline score: 5 | |
| S Dec 12, 2014 at 14:41 | history | suggested | Agi Hammerthief | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
corrected grammar
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| Dec 12, 2014 at 13:46 | comment | added | xeor | You should find the users having all uppercase addresses in your database and send them a "generic" survey. I am pretty sure people doing this are in the 60+ age, who thinks that some human needs to read the form manually. Uppercase letters are easier to distinguish from eachothers than lowercase | |
| Dec 12, 2014 at 13:14 | vote | accept | Rich Andrews | ||
| Dec 13, 2014 at 14:55 | |||||
| Dec 12, 2014 at 13:06 | comment | added | Rich Andrews | Yes, I am very aware of the problems with sanitising the data and I almost left it out of the question because it is just not really an option (the wider problems I mentioned). Hence asking the question under ux not stackoverflow - the problem is user / ux one and I am not looking for a programming solution, I can work that out myself :) | |
| Dec 12, 2014 at 13:03 | comment | added | Damon | You should see solicitors as morons, not users. They will write entire paragraphs in all-caps (and in a deliberately unintellegible babble), that's just what they do. Take any kind of software license file or the warranty sheet of any product you bought as an example. The intent is probably to emphasize importance, but who knows. In any case it makes everything unreadable to everybody else. | |
| Dec 12, 2014 at 12:57 | comment | added | Agi Hammerthief | Well, yes, that's kind of the point; you can't be sure the sanitizer will get the process right, when even humans are evidently fallible. | |
| Dec 12, 2014 at 12:55 | answer | added | Agi Hammerthief | timeline score: 14 | |
| Dec 12, 2014 at 12:37 | comment | added | O. R. Mapper |
@snotwaffle: "van" should not always be lower-case - that is precisely one of the issues :) And while we're there, thoroughly look at the list and also see the more peculiar versions such as VanDyke (in one word, with an inner capital).
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| Dec 12, 2014 at 12:34 | comment | added | Agi Hammerthief | "I realise we could sanitise this input and proper case the data entered but I fear that way could lead to much wider problems." Much wider problems in what way? Name sanitisation is difficult/unreliable, as @O.R.Mapper points out. For example, "VAN DER MERWE": Do you make it "Van Der Merwe" or build something that recognises "van ", "de " and "der ", etc. should always be lower-case?. | |
| Dec 12, 2014 at 12:29 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Dec 12, 2014 at 14:41 | |||||
| Dec 12, 2014 at 12:27 | comment | added | O. R. Mapper | I realise we could sanitise this input and proper case the data entered - no offense intended, but no, I think you cannot reliably do that. What you might be able to do is make the input uniform, but like that, it is probably not "sanitary" and even less likely "properly cased". | |
| Dec 12, 2014 at 10:47 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackUX/status/543356348147449856 | ||
| Dec 12, 2014 at 8:51 | review | First posts | |||
| Dec 12, 2014 at 9:38 | |||||
| Dec 12, 2014 at 8:49 | answer | added | user597 | timeline score: 84 | |
| Dec 12, 2014 at 8:37 | history | asked | Rich Andrews | CC BY-SA 3.0 |