In text, aLtErNaTiNg CaPiTaL aNd LoWeRcAsE lEtTeRs In A sEnTeNcE, or MIxiNG tHEm at rANdom IN woRds, is frequently used to express an ominous or creepy vibe. It looks inherently wrong, like someone is typing with a broken shift key. Additional tEXt ErRRRRRR$@#U*)orrssss....;;;;;;;;, blacked-out ██████ ███ words █████████ or let█ers, eeeEELLLonGaaTed lETTTTerrrss, oRRR rEPEated wORdssssswordswords sometimes accompany this kind of effect to create the impression of a glitching computer or damaged keyboard.
This trope might have to do with how we perceive a sentence in text as we read it with our internal voice. As you read this sentence, for example, everything sounds normal in your head. bUT As yOu rEAD THis seNtence, yOU ArE pRoBably iMAGIninG iT COMiNG OUT oF a SHAky, dISTorTed, or glITCHing vOIce. In a text-based medium where readers have to make up a character's voice in their head, alternating capitals and lowercase helps prompt them to imagine a scary voice and set the frightening atmosphere.
This trope is sometimes used when a kidnapper cuts letters out of printed material and glues them together on paper to create a ransom note—the Cut-and-Paste Note, which is done to make it harder for the authorities to track down the kidnapper.
It could be used more generally any time someone wants to send an untraceable message.
Outside of horror, alternating capitals are also used as a typing style to make fun of what others are saying, which originated from the Mocking SpongeBob
meme. However, that doesn't fall under this trope.
Another name for this typing style is studly caps.
A Sub-Trope of Ominous Visual Glitch.
Related:
- AcCENT upon the Wrong SylLABle: The result of trying to read such text.
- CamelCase: PuttingWordsTogetherWithoutSpacesToFormASingleWord.
- Electronic Speech Impediment: A visual way to show that a robot is malfunctioning.
- Glitch Entity: A character who exists because of a glitch, and might speak in this fashion.
- Shifting Voice of Madness: An auditory equivalent.
- Voice of the Legion: Something that alternating letters might represent in typed form.
eXAmpLEs:
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aNiMe aND MaNga
- My Hero Academia: In the last chapters of the manga, Dabi's dialogue is rendered in mixed capitals to represent his Vader Breath, because he is contained in a life-support machine from burning his entire body to a crisp during the final battle. He is slowly dying and only has the strength to talk for a few minutes a day.
Dabi: SHoTo... i'M SoRrY...
aRT
- This DeviantArt piece, thOUghts Of A dyIng AthEIst, has the title in mixed creepy capitals. It shows a frightened young girl alone in a dark, dirty room with nothing but a bed and old, ragged blanket, and a ghost hovering near her.
COmiC BoOks
- In Jeph Loeb's Batman works, the Mad Hatter only speaks in lines from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, with the text constantly shifting between upper and lowercase.
FaN woRKS
- In the Ask a Pony blog Ask Eldritch Discord, Discord is quite different from his original Laughably Evil self and is a nightmare-inducing Eldritch Abomination who delights in causing bloody and violent suffering.
HellO, grEETinGS, i aM DISCORDheeheehee
wHY doN't you stEp ON IN AND HAve some FUN?
I wON'T hurt you
I just want to breE
e
E
eak yOU. - In Dante's Night at Freddy's 2: Animatronic Boogaloo, the animatronic referred to only as "Freddy" (who, at that point, is an shambling, zombie-like amalgamation of Withered and Golden Freddy) speaks this way, and is the only animatronic in either story to get the better of Dante, if only for an extremely brief moment.
- In the Pokémon comic "My sis was on facebook when she found this story about MISSINGNO. ;_;", when its Trainer dies during a journey, a Nidoran is left in its Poké Ball for years and years, so long that its internal data starts to break down. The text representing its inner thoughts and the voice of the Poké Ball's monitoring system become more and more distorted as it deteriorates.
DATA CORRUPTION 48%
D@tA C0rRUPTIOn 67%
EmErGenCY rEa90Lase SySTE98M eNGage.-
dAt@ corrUPTIOn 74.%
eRoR inSUFi23CIenT dATa eMERgenCY89 reLEASE faiLEDdDDDD.DD
eRROR missingNO_
lITERaTure
- Deliberately invoked in Jingo, where policeman Sam Vimes secures premises from a rioting mob by simply chalking, in large letters, UnDeR tHe PrOTecTiON Of ThE CiTy wAtcH. The savvier rioters know only one section of the population has such a shaky grasp of where capitalisation goes in a sentence — and that's Trolls. It's also well known that Commander Vimes employs one as a Watchman. And that if Sergeant Detritus is charged with protecting something, it stays protected, regardless of who or what else gets splattered.
mUSiC
- MILGRAM:
- The teaser for the Third Trial begins with a statistics graph showing the percentages of innocent and guilty votes in the First and Second Trials. For each prisoner, the letters in the word "innocent" or "guilty" next to their name is typed with a random mix of capitals and lowercase, as if the computer is glitching. It fits with the ominous tone of the teaser: Yuno can be heard saying that someone (Mahiru) has died, Futa has committed himself to Amane's new cult, Amane is furiously ranting that she "had" to kill Shidou, and Mikoto's alternate personality is gone.
- In the video for Futa's Third Trial song, "The Appare March," the English subtitles are a mix of capitals and lowercase to indicate his Sanity Slippage after becoming the first devotee of Amane's new cult.
VidEO gAMes
- Ancient Domains of Mystery: Chaos beings talk like this, including the PC if they become corrupted enough.
- ENDER MAGNOLIA: Bloom in the Mist: After defeating the mutated "Chief Attuner's Homunculus", where homunculi are artificial beings, and mutation is a corrupting condition, they speak "glitchily" when apologizing and further speaking:
ForGIve me...
Abelia... ... mAnipuLAted...
No more...
Must... hONor mY wOrd...
Must gO... to JoRAn... - Final Fantasy XIV: The small mechanical mammets have their dialogue written this way to convey their synthetic voice, but their Super-Deformed appearance offsets the creepiness factor. However, this also gets played with in the Heavensward Hildibrand questline, which features a mammet who wants to Become a Real Boy, and uses the inhuman factors to emphasize how dehumanized he feels. At one point, he's given a full-sized, human-proportioned muscular body that is anything but cute, but retains his inhuman face and voice — and it's still not scary, because he and other characters are delighted in his horrifyingly absurd new form.
- In Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest, Garon displays this speech pattern after his true nature as a slime zombie is revealed. Takumi also briefly slips into this when he falls victim to the same curse and becomes the Final Boss.
- The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-: When Zen'ta's disguise as lovable wrestler Moko Mojiro begins to slip during the first playthrough, her sentences begin randomly adding capital letters, and her voice becomes a distorted Voice of the Legion. The Japanese version of the game accomplishes a similar effect by having her switch between hiragana and katakana.
- Lemmings: In Oh No! More Lemmings, levels that involve assigning bombers to walking lemmings (a notoriously fiddly task because you have to judge how far they will walk in 5 seconds) have titles in mixed capitals, for example "LeMming ToMato KetchUp fAcilitY".
- Look Outside:
- Roaches is The Worm That Walks and has a vague grasp on the English language, resulting in their text coming out this way. It's downplayed, as the only thing "creepy" about them is that they're a mass of mutant cockroaches. They're very friendly otherwise.
- After becoming a parasite monster because of Rafta invading his eyeball, Nestor speaks like this to communicate just how off he looks and sounds while possessing Eugene.
Nestor: I've nEvEr fElT mOre aLIve... I Can'T tHanK yOu EnOuGH!!
- NieR: Automata: At the start of Route C, the entire Bunker is infected by the Machines' Logic Virus, and as the androids there succumb to the virus, their speech patterns and intonations grow increasingly erratic, reflected in strange capitalizations of the subtitles. For example:
"Two-Bee, I…am Operator 6O. ThANk you for… foR the FLOWErs. Desert FLOWErs are BEAUTIF, arEN’t thEY… Th-Th-thank You… SoMEdAy I…"
- In Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent, King Pardis III's attacks are written with alternating capitals during his boss fight at the end of the Master of All arc to show just how corrupted he's become due to owning four of the Divine Rings.
- Octopath Traveler II:
- An NPC in Lostseed gives information in alternating capitals when the player uses a info Path Action on them (i.e. Inquire, Scrutinize, Bribe and Coerce). When removed from the rest of the text, the capital letters spell "Rescue me".
- A child in Gravell has a stuffed animal that, according to his profile, eats his soul at night so he's not too scared to go to sleep. Its name is rendered in his inventory as "STuFfEd ToY."
- Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: The mysterious messages Mario gets emailed in the Glitz Pit are written in alternating caps, while a chilling arrangement of "Ice Land" from Super Mario Bros. 3 plays before the message is read.
- Pokémon Reborn: During the postgame, people affected by Anomalies talk like this, signifying the Legendary or otherwise corrupt aura they have.
- Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon: Dark Matter speaks like this, and is an Eldritch Abomination comprised of the negative feelings of every Pokémon in existence whose goal is to end all life by hurling the planet into the sun.
Dark Matter: LoOk aT YoU, coMPareD tO tHe uniVERse. YoU aRE tOo SmAll tO Do aNYthiNg.
- Regretevator: dolorem.bin, a throwback to old shoddy Creepypastas, deliberately uses alternating caps in his dialogue to make himself appear creepier. The only exceptions to this are when he's yelling, in which case he'll use CAPS LOCK, or if he's breaking character in some way.
dolorem.bin: thIs AbAndOneD tOwn wAsNt Any mAtcH foR mY sTreGtH... wait, what?
- RuneScape: The examine text of the mysterious Chaos Elemental is "pUre A cHaOs of crEatuRe!"
- Shin Megami Tensei: Demons that usually are usually The Unintelligible but can be properly talked to or fused tend to have this speech pattern.
ThE NAme's [Race] [Demon]. PuT 'Er ThERe! EeHeE!
vIsuAL NOveLS
- Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth: In the third level, Edgeworth arrives at a Blue Badger-themed amusement park to pay the ransom for kidnapping victim (or so it appears) Lance Amano. He is guided through the park by a caller using a voice modulator, whose text is described this way.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations: Near the end of the final episode, when the spirit of Dahlia Hawthorne, often considered to be one of the most frightening villains in the series, realizes that she has been defeated and is about to be expelled from Maya Fey's body, one of the last lines she says is written like this.
Dahlia: ...Y-You... OoOooOOh... ...Y-You'RE... wROnG... ...It... CAN'T... be... ...How... coULd... I... ...loSe... to... THe... ...likES... of... YOU...?
weBComiCs
- Angela's Magic Lesson: One of the epilogues results in Angela becoming a Brown Note Being who has everyone going insane in her presence, despite her spell seemingly doing nothing, and Angela remains blissfully unaware of what's happening. This epilogue is entitled "OrDiNaRy WaLk HoMe".
- Homestuck: Inverted with Gamzee, whose typing quirk aLtErNaTeS cApItAlS iN a SiLlY wAy when he's high on sopor slime, which is when he's at his most friendly and harmless. It's time to worry when he stops doing this and changes to ALTERNATING BETWEEN ALL CAPITALS and all lowercase letters. That's when he sobers up and becomes an Ax-Crazy murderous lunatic.
- Paranatural: The spirit Lucifer's dialogue is depicted somewhere between this and AcCENT upon the Wrong SylLABle, to represent his voice constantly brightening and dimming.
wEb ORiGinaL
- In various MSTings, this is done to convey the speaking style of Torgo from Manos: The Hands of Fate if a reference is made to him.
- In the Pokémon Creepypasta Event Gone Wrong, a player downloads an event Mew that turns out to be a Yandere. It slaughters their entire party and kills any more Pokémon they try to catch. After being forced to bury their other Pokémon, the player tries to turn the game off, but they get a text box that reads "YoU cAn'T gEt RiD oF mE… I WoN't LeT yOu."
WEb VIdeO
- YouTube Poops often use this to portray sentence mixing while leaving the original line written normally or intentionally misspelled.
WebsitEs
- On Reddit, the subreddit r/PeopleFuckingDying parodies this trope by intentionally having every single post title be in this format and playing the normally cute or harmless contents up for drama.