THE PROBLEM:

I recently exchanged a few emails with a young author. It was difficult to read her emails because every single word started with a capital letter. I finally got a bit frustrated because reading her emails made my eyes water. I wrote: “May I ask why your email program capitalizes every word of your email?”

HER EXPLANATION:

“The Capitalization Of Every Word Is My Doing. It’s Something I Have Been Doing Since I Started Typing (September I’ll Be 26).I Must Confess… My Mother Told Me Not To Write A ‘Business’ Letter In My Fashion But I Believe Each Word Is Just As Important As The Next.”

MY RESPONSE:

You should not capitalize every word. It creates gross punctuation errors and, to be completely honest with you, people will think you either have a severe software error or that you have not been educated properly. Writers simply can’t rewrite grammar and punctuation rules on a whim and expect to be taken seriously.

Please take my advice and use proper punctuation or your writing career will definitely suffer. Publishers and editors don’t accept these types of errors with humor or creativity. In fact, many may be offended by the deliberate misuse of proper punctuation rules.