lexicon.all-caps-shouting

What it flags

Runs of consecutive ALL-CAPS words.

ALL-CAPS prose strips the shape cues that dyslexic readers rely on to disambiguate words:

• Ascenders — the strokes that rise above the body of letters like b, d, h, k, l.
• Descenders — the strokes that drop below the baseline in g, p, q, y.
• X-height contrast — the height difference between short letters like a, e, o and tall ones like h, l.

In all-caps, every letter sits on the same baseline at the same height. The reader loses the silhouette of the word and has to decode letter by letter. ALL-CAPS also triggers many screen readers to spell out the run letter by letter unless the surrounding markup says otherwise.

WCAG 3.1.5 and the BDA Dyslexia Style Guide both recommend lowercase or sentence case for emphasis.

At a glance

Detection

Per paragraph, scan for runs of consecutive ALL-CAPS words. Minor connectors (,, ;, :, -, whitespace) keep a run alive; a lowercase word, a period, or paragraph break ends it.

A word is ALL-CAPS when it is at least 2 letters long and contains no lowercase letter. Single ALL-CAPS tokens are treated as abbreviations and are the responsibility of lexicon.unexplained-abbreviation.

Code blocks are excluded by the Markdown parser before the rule runs.

Parameters

dev-doc tolerates a 2-word emphasis run (DO NOT) common in technical docs.

Examples

lucid-lint reports; the rewrite is always yours.

English

One emphasis phrase, colour-matched across the rewrite — the shouting becomes typographic emphasis without losing the stress.

Before (flagged):

Please DO NOT touch this.

DO NOT reads as shouting.

What lucid-lint check --profile public reports:

warning input.md:1:8 2 consecutive ALL-CAPS words read as shouting and degrade legibility for dyslexic readers. Use sentence case and rely on emphasis (italics, bold) or a callout instead. [lexicon.all-caps-shouting]

After (your rewrite):

Please do not touch this.

Known false positives

A chain of three or more acronyms in prose (API HTTP TLS) is structurally indistinguishable from shouting and will fire. Suppress on the line if the chain is intentional, or restructure the prose.

Suppression

See Suppressing diagnostics.

See also

• lexicon.unexplained-abbreviation
• Conditions

References

• Arditi & Cho (2007)
• Nielsen Norman Group
• Bringhurst (2013)

See References for the full bibliography.