# Sometime after 1984

Bicameral script has been around for centuries though the rules for its use have only solidified in the last few hundred years. While printed material was able to use both upper and lower case, the need for efficiency in telegraph communications meant there was an era when all electronic communication was in all-caps from the early 19th century to the early 1980s.

Early computers were not able to display lower case, or did not by default. When personal computers came along, and screen resolutions were high enough, their broader use use created a need for lower case. This would be solidified when character set standards such as ascii and latin-1 were widely adopted for latin scripts.

New republic published an article how capital letters became internet code for yelling which contains many references to possibilities, but no definitive answer. It notes that all-caps has been used back into antiquity for emphasis, but there is no consensus for when it became widely understood to be yelling, and in particular vulgar.

We can put some boundaries on the date. This thread from usenet back in 1984 people are still debating how best to add emphasis to text. Various things are suggested including...

- ALL-CAPS
- *ASTERISKS*
- S P A C I N G
- SwItChInG cAsE (WHICH I REMEMBER AS A MaD hAxOr THING)
T H A T T H R E A D I S A M A Z I N G, *I'D SUGGEST YOU READ IT*


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Original content by Schwern from History Stack Exchange
https://history.stackexchange.com/a/41250/3763