13. It's a myth that capital letters are inherently hard to read

THE MYTH: CAPITAL LETTERS ARE HARD TO READ

Since mixed case words have a unique shape, it stands to reason they are more easily recognized by our brains. Words made up of entirely all capitals, however, are all the same shape and make the mind work harder to identify the individual characters, and then the word itself.  This sort of makes sense, after all, our brains are hardwired to find patterns and it's not too far fetched an idea to think that we would see these blocks like a big basic pattern, and not individual words.    But it's just not true. 

WHAT'S ACTUALLY HAPPENING

How we actually read is pretty interesting. According to Kenneth Paap (1984), we actually read by recognizing the letters first, then by recognizing the letters, the word.  We also don't read as smoothly as you think either. We actually read in short jumps (called saccades | 7-9 letters at a time) and stops (called fixations | 250 milliseconds)  

ADDITIONAL READING HABIT INFO

 [Fun Fact ] Saccades: We don't see anything and we don't even realize that we're not seeing anything happen.    Although saccades are 7-9 characters, we actually enlist the help of our peripheral sight and typically read ahead ~ 15 characters at a time. This isn't quite as impressive as it sounds. We pick up the semantic cues of only the first 7 or so, and we only sorta recognize the remaining 8-15 characters.    Ever wonder how those who read music seem to do it with ease? Well, it turns out that reading music is actually very similar to reading. It turns out that music reading uses the same saccades and fixations as reading regular text. 

SO, ARE THEY ACTUALLY HARDER TO READ?

The answer is yes and no. Basically, it comes down to the fact that we're just honestly just used to seeing it written that way. If you practiced reading lots of all capital typed text, you would eventually become just as fluid if it were mixed.    However, capitals do have a bit of a reputation. All capitals can come across as "yelling" and may inadvertently set a tone with the reader. Try to use all caps only when you're using it as a title/header or to get someone's ATTENTION.      Below here, we have a very enthusiastic Dr. Andy Johnson who talks a bit more about "how we read".