a case for lowercase texting as an adult

statistically insignificant but vibes-wise significant

A few months ago, I bought my first MacBook due to complications with my old laptop (rip) and left the auto-capitalization settings on by default for a few weeks. Although the tone I used in texting had not changed from one device to another, the texts sent from my laptop felt extremely disingenuous to me, and I opted for texting from my iPhone out of a desire for seeming more like me in my texts, despite my typing speed on my laptop being 125+ WPM (subtle flex), which is about 2 times faster than my iPhone typing speed. One of my friends even pointed out that it was jarring to see my texts with capitalization.

Ever since this occurrence, I’ve been (over)thinking about whether there comes a time in people’s lives (my life) when I need to toggle auto-capitalization in my system settings. Am I too old to be texting lowercase? Is there a certain age threshold where texting in lowercase becomes unacceptable? Have I just conditioned myself or generalized myself as a lowercase texter given how many years I have read lowercase text messages from my side of a text chain? Will shifting from lowercase to autocaps really have any bearing on my friendships over text?

As part of the generation that grew up with/on the Internet, it is unsurprising how much linguistic richness can be found within text exchanges. What is particularly exciting to me is how texting for many Gen Z’ers has become a balance of utilitarianism (strictly delivering a message) and aesthetic (communicating with tone and expression that reflects personality) and what this means for the future of writing. Though miscommunication over text is still aplenty these days, we have lived through a great deal of evolution in texting as a means to avoid miscommunication.

As a quick aside, the craft of building texting personas (both consciously and subconsciously) fascinates me, particularly when texters use techniques like typing “errors” such as spacing before punctuation (“omg !!”), repetition of final letters (“LOLLL”), and ellipsis usage and variations outside the classic 3 consecutive dots (“oh…” vs “oh…..”).

This is merely a hunch based on anecdotal evidence, but for me, spacing before punctuation (especially exclamation points) contributes to perception of femininity and warmth from a texter, regardless of their capitalization. As for ellipsis usage, Boomers are often under attack for overusing them, but as soon as one of my friends started frequently using them, I quickly adopted the practice. I love them so much…

I am not completely sure how to articulate why ellipsis usage has become so appealing to me, but part of it lies in how they seem to pace conversations, signifying pauses and time for thinking. I also wonder how ellipsis usage at the ends of texts contribute to a state of being present in a conversation and indicating turn-taking in a more explicit way.

What’s also exciting to me is how I’ve seen Gen Z’ers adapting to their friends’ texting style. There’s a concept called communication accommodation theory, which is pretty much what you would expect based on the name. When people interact via conversation, they seek approval and hope to front a positive image of themselves through their behaviors. Usually, people converge by adapting to the other person’s communication, meeting in the middle to reduce any potential differences. I see this happening over text at least for myself, and I have noticed that I tend to text each of my friends slightly differently due to this phenomenon.

Now, that’s enough of that tangent. Back to lowercase texting.

In terms of perceptions of lowercase texters, I found the article “New and Changing Social Evaluations of All-lowercase and Exclamation Points” by Abirou et al. (2024). This article has relatively sound methodology given its aims, as well as a tense agreement error: “The distinction between single and multiple exclamation points is not as well understand” (come on, UPenn Linguistics…). They conclude with underwhelming results about how lowercase texters are perceived as generally younger, trendier, and more online compared to standard texters with autocaps. The inclusion of exclamation marks, however, leads to interpretations of femininity and extroverted. To reiterate, none of these results were significant so…

What surprised me about my research (a quick Google search) was discourse associating lowercase texting with laziness and “low investment” in a relationship. Personally, I had always believed the opposite to be true. Technically, default settings leave auto-capitalization on, so users toggling it off are putting more work into crafting a texting persona for themselves, right?

In a Mashable article about technology transforming language and communication, the author quotes linguistics professor Lauren Fonteyn from the University of Manchester:

Autocorrect is actually working against the ‘ease of effort’ that comes with all lowercase, so using lowercase is about more than simply doing the easiest thing; it’s also about showing that you are a person who does all lowercase.

— Lauren Fonteyn

So yeah, I’m right. Kidding!

Whenever I text “real adults” (basically anyone over the age 30 besides my parents) or use Slack, I put in effort despite my toggled off autocaps to capitalize and punctuate properly. The obvious reason for this is just the formality of communicating with “real adults” and avoiding giving off a too casual vibe in a work setting. But a more subtle aspect is hinting at the distance between me and my interlocutor, marking our relationship as Not Friends. Nothing against any of those people, but there is a certain distance that we tacitly agree to maintain.

…using all lowercase on social media and texts allows her to separate online communication that's for work versus pleasure.

— Jess Joho, Mashable

Famous feminist author and theorist bell hooks specifically chose her all lowercase pen name to point away from her individuality and toward collectivism and its ideas. To further extend these ideas, language as a prescriptive, patriarchal, standardized institution inherently suppresses people at a societal disadvantage. (Hell, even the way I was trained to write and the words I just chose to use for the previous sentence make language inaccessible and oppressive.) Maybe for some lowercase texting is a subtle nod toward rebelling against the institution. For a lot of people, I’m hypothesizing it’s simply a behavior of assimilating into some Internet subcultures, marking people as “chill” and “in-the-know.”

Regarding perceived femininity through texting styles, an article on Vice discusses the pop cultural zeitgeist of lowercase spelling for female artists (e.g., Taylor Swift’s folklore and evermore and Charli xcx’s brat) as a rejection of the patriarchal and Trumpian connotations of the all caps digital communication. Though it’s likely these pop culture icons’ capitalization choices are merely a commodification of perceived realness and authenticity, the status quo of prescriptive grammar is challenged nonetheless.

We can use language to reflect on and push back against systems and create new stylistic practises that bring attention to the systems by which we mean to deconstruct racism and sexism…

— deandre miles-hercules, a PhD researcher in sociolinguistics at the University California Santa Barbara

In the Vice article, miles-hercules argues that bell hooks’s rejection of English writing conventions marks her writing as antithetical to the institution of imperialism, capitalism, whiteness, and patriarchy that are inextricably tied to one another. I’m sure most people in my generation who toggled autocaps off had these things in mind (I did not because I was 12 at the time), but its historical and political impact is still a point worth noting.

(Another side note: deandre miles-hercules does really cool research, and I highly recommend reading some of their papers if you’re interested in sociolinguistics and its intersection with Black and queer experiences.)

What comforted me about the top articles were how open all the authors seemed to lowercase texting… except for one of them, also from Mashable. The author here argues for people to grow up and turn their autocaps back on for the sake of being taken more seriously and indicating adulthood.

Many, like 23-year-old Louise Elzvik, attributed their decision to turn autocaps back on to the desire to be perceived as more mature and professional. "I have it turned back on partially because it's more professional and partly because the lowercase feels childish, and I felt I had grown out of that."

If writing in all lowercase defined your adolescence it only makes sense that you'd turn autocaps back on to signal a shift to adulthood.

— Elena Cavender, Mashable

All this article achieves is making me think Elena Cavender is not a fun person to be around. And maybe it’s worth investigating more into “trends” (I disagree that lowercasing text is a trend, especially given everything I just discussed) before categorizing people as immature and chronically online for lowercase texting. I can acknowledge Cavender’s disdain toward a performative movement toward authenticity and casualness online, but to outright claim lowercasing as childish is a bit of a stretch. One of the 20-somethings interviewed in this article goes so far as to call lowercase texting “aloof, nonchalant, and indifferent” and claims that turning her caps back on allows her to “live life with intention.” Regardless of the reason for toggling autocaps off in the first place, Cavender’s points merely motivate me to keep my texts in lowercase for the time being.

Anyway, I couldn’t care less if you have autocaps on or off. I think there are certain people and personalities that work well with lowercase and some that should probably stick to auto-capitalization; it’s case-by-case (pun intended). The beauty of digital communication is that we all have a sort of digital dialect or idiolect (dialect per individual) in the way we text our friends and family and because of the way people are conditioned texting styles, making anything outside the ordinary jarring to readers.

So when should us lowercase texters switch autocaps back on?

idk