From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,768ec7d79291ed2c X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: mheaney@ni.net (Matthew Heaney) Subject: Re: IDENTIFIERS in Upper Case Date: 1997/03/26 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 228738602 References: <1997Mar26.185431.12742@nosc.mil> Organization: Estormza Software Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1997-03-26T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <1997Mar26.185431.12742@nosc.mil>, sampson@cod.nosc.mil (Charles H. Sampson) wrote: > I've heard it said that of all the possible case conventions that >could be used in programming, the worst possible one is to require iden- >tifiers to be all upper case. (This is one of those opinions that I >agree with.) Often when I've heard this, there has been either an ac- >company statement or an implication that studies have been done showing >that this convention reduces comprehension, compared to the all-lower- >case or the initial-caps ones. Can anyone point me toward any such >study? I doesn't even have to be on the Internet. A reasonably acces- >sible journal would be fine. The book you want - and the book every software engineer should read - is Designing The User Interface, by Ben Scheiderman. In the chapter 9 (of the 1st ed), Printed Manuals, Online Help, and Tutorials, he sites a study (by Moskel) that showed comprehension scores were higher for lower-and-upper case text. There's also a quote (I know it's in the 2nd ed, but that's at work) that the reading speed for mixed case is a certain percent faster (15%?) than reading all-uppercase text. You can contact Dr. Scheiderman at the addresses below. He'll have the definative answer! Matt -------------------------------------------------------------------- Matthew Heaney Software Development Consultant (818) 985-1271