astercontrol:

If you wonder how old I am, I’m old enough to have seen capital letters and exclamation points switch meanings

by which I mean: ending a sentence with an exclamation point used to make it look as if you were shouting.

And writing in all caps did not make it look as if you were shouting.

(it didn’t always have any particular meaning. people just understood that it’s used in everything from comic-strip dialogue to street signs, and it would be ridiculous to assume those are always shouting, so we didn’t assume it about people’s emails either. We just guessed they found it easier to hit the caps lock key once than the shift key every sentence)

But now all caps means shouting, and exclamation points don’t mean shouting, they’re actually treated as if it makes the sentence look more polite.

KIDS THESE DAYS!