2792: Coding Tone in Text Aug 12, 2024

The means of writing have only ever gotten more complex, graphically speaking, as writers try to make words on a page more like speech. Ancient writing lacked punctuation and didn’t even have spaces; the form of writing did not take on a significance unto itself. This continued for a long time, including when italics were invented (in Italy, hence the name) simply to be able to fit more rows of text onto a page, and to mimic cursive style writing. This was not a version of roman letters, but its own font, until it was eventually merged. Historically, even in pieces with both italics and roman typeface, such as when the former is used the introduction to a book, this is not for emphasis but still meant to make a visual break from the main text.

Any dichotomy in writing choices have typically led to meaningful subtextual changes, as happened when italics were applied for emphasis or stress on individual words, seen as early as the 16th century. This is also different to, say, bold lettering too, which is designed to draw the eye to it without needing to read, whereas italics more subtly gives visual emphasis as the eye scans over it in the course of reading. 

While italics have been in use for a long time now, even with this later utility being accepted in formal writing, the Internet has accelerated other binary style choices for subtextual uses. All-uppercase not only offers visual emphasis, but conveys excitability, like a feeling of anger or surprise, originally born of technical limitations. Of course, this is all in addition to punctuation, but that does not inherently carry the same emotional weight, so the following are all different in practice:

What?

What?

WHAT?