NEED HELP-process words in a text file

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Fri, 24 Jun 2011 19:17:29 +0000, Cousin Stanley wrote:

> Chris Rebert wrote:
> 
>> Netiquette comment: Please avoid SHOUTING ....
> 
>   The brilliant beam of light that first thought capitilized words
>   amounted to shouting never programmed cobol, fortran, or pl/1 in the
>   1960s or 1970s .... :-)

That's probably because the use of capitalisation for emphasis pre-dates 
the invention of computers by centuries. It is hardly an accident that 
the technical term for uppercase is derived from the same root as 
"majestic" and "major".

The history of so-called "minuscule" and "majuscule" letters is complex, 
and it hasn't been a universal rule that Capital Letters have ALWAYS been 
read as emphatic, but it has been true for hundreds of years (at least 
for languages that have capital letters).

Not the ONLY form of emphasis, of course (underlining, bold face, italics 
and  l e t t e r - s p a c i n g  are only a few of the other 
alternatives available), but in a plain-text medium with little control 
over the display of font, the use of lower and UPPER case letters is one 
of the few alternatives available. (The use of *markup* seems to have 
been a late invention in English, although in other languages it has been 
used much longer.)

If ONE word in uppercase is read in a SLIGHTLY louder voice, then 
naturally it doesn't take much imagination TO READ EVEN QUITE SHORT 
PASSAGES OF UNINTERRUPTED UPPERCASE WORDS AS SHOUTING LOUDLY -- 
regardless of the poor design of programming languages in the 60s and 70s.


-- 
Steven