How about the all caps vs. sentence style capitalization issue? Which are most of you and your clients using?
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How about the all caps vs. sentence style capitalization issue? Which are most of you and your clients using?
"All capital letters" doesn't leave room for capitalization errors and ensures that
drawing text looks legible. Sometimes lowercase letters can print sloppy on
certain printers. Faxing can also having issues with lowercase text.
We use all caps on all of our drawings.Originally Posted by gadjet
Engineering drawings have "always" been done in all caps for reasons of legibility and consistency.Originally Posted by gadjet
CAD does make it feasible to use mixed case but I don't see any established companies doing so although many companies do seem to accept smaller text heights nowadays.
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All Caps is industry standard for all disiplines as far as I know.
The only time I've seen upper and lower case in a drawing was one done by a landscape architect, and it was a pretty bad looking drawing. The client was very displeased.
All caps, all the time. Just be careful when you switch over to email or AUGI...
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All CAPS, all the time.
If you (or the client) ever microfiche the drawing lower case text might as well be a line.
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All Caps is the only way to go. The only time I personally don't use it is when noting dimensional lumber. For some reason I just prefer 2x8 to 2X8, likely due to legability of numbers...
My 2 cents is that the ALL CAPS METHOD is a hold over from the manual drafting days and simply has no place in the year 2006 and beyond. How many other things do you see printed in all Caps?
I did a quick Web search and found a couple of articles regarding readability and user retention.
http://hubel.sfasu.edu/courseinfo/SL03/email_study.htm
http://www.wmich.edu/wmu/writing/typography.html
An excerpt from the latter states:
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ALL CAPS
Perhaps the most frequently violated rule of readability involves the use of ALL CAPS (capital letters). Designers are often drawn to all caps because it forms neat, uniform, visual elements, or "blocks." Unfortunately, for precisely that reason, type set in all caps is more difficult to read.
Your brain does not recognize words solely on the basis of specific letter combinations, but on the overall shape of the words. In fact, your brain recognizes whole phrases based on letter shape rather than identifying individual letters and words. Which of the following is easier to read: GOOD OLD DOG or good old dog.
For readability, avoid all caps even in heads and subheads. The most readable headlines and subheads are set only with the first letter of the first word (and proper nouns) capitalized, just as in sentences.
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If the goal of drawings is to clearly communicate information, then the use of sentence case seems like a no-brainier to me.
With all due respect, neither of those articles is actually about Engineering or Architectural drawings.Originally Posted by Tom Dorner
You don't seem to be considering readability issues for plan sets, which are often copied half size and/or used in the field by contractors. Reading all caps is much easier in those situations.
Granted, we no longer use blue prints, which were a major factor in how a drawing needed to appear in order to reproduce a legible copy. But in the field it can be much more difficult to read a set of plans than it is to read it sitting in your office.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think upper and lower case is always a bad idea, some clients may accept it. I also think issues like this deserve to be revisited on occasion to keep everyone thinking of new possibilities.
But it's not always good to do something just because you can. And I certainly think this subject is not a "no brainer".
Last edited by BrenBren; 2006-03-21 at 02:59 PM. Reason: spelling