A case for casing â why style standards are important

In today’s relaxed online world, the key to digital marketing success is substance with the power to engage – so little irritations like consistency and style aren’t important, right? Wrong.

Your method of capturing a reader’s attention is integral to their impression of your brand. If you’re proud of what you’re selling, it doesn’t make sense to be sloppy about how you sell it.

While many people don’t even notice whether an apostrophe has been correctly placed, remember there will always be a sector of your audience which DOES cares deeply about details. It’s worth taking the extra few minutes to broaden your appeal – as well as enjoying the satisfaction of knowing you’ve done the job properly.

A case in point

A frequent problem is the misuse of capitals. There’s a common tendency to sprinkle these throughout copy and creative materials like glitter at a 1980s theme night – but please, try to restrain yourself.

If you really want to emphasise a word, starting it with an upper-case letter is not necessarily the answer. There’s a world of design tricks out there – and you can also carefully choose how you order your words to achieve the effect you’re seeking.

There are two main approaches to the use of casing:

Title case
This is the act of capitalising words in a sentence or heading to give an impression of importance, despite there being no grammatical requirement to do so. For example, Free Dairy Milkshakes For Kids (instead of Free dairy milkshakes for kids).

Sentence case
This is when only proper nouns – genuine titles – are capitalised. For example, Get the perfect Christmas gift(instead of Get The Perfect Christmas Gift).

The case for sentence case

Though title case is an accepted method in website copywriting, it is often applied wrongly or unnecessarily, which can look… well, rather amateurish.

Here at CE, we champion sentence case – with a passion. Here are our thoughts:

Be correct. Title case is a style decision and can impact negatively on the grammatical accuracy of text. Items such as job titles and menu options are rarely proper nouns unless they are unique. For example, the Queenshould always be capitalised, while chief executive should not, as it is a description of what a person does. Likewise, while an Italian sharing platter should always feature a capital letter, the same cannot be said for aseafood sharing platter.

Consistency. When using title case, different people may choose to capitalise different words, resulting in a patchwork of outcomes. The above example of title case could emerge as Free dairy Milkshakes for Kids or evenFree Dairy Milkshakes for kids. These look untidy and indecisive.

Just say it. Title casing breaks the visual flow of text, thus affecting the way in which the reader absorbs its meaning. What is intended to attract attention can actually muddy the message. Sentence case, by comparison, allows you to be clear and confident.

Aesthetic appeal. The streamlined nature of sentence case makes for more decisive-looking website content – rather than the frantic effect of capitals strewn all over the place.

So, next time you write or review your brand’s output, stop to think: Why are we capitalising these words? If there isn’t a logical reason, it’d probably look better if you didn’t.

Find out more at Connecting Element