Submitted by Wonder Boy and Matthew

In grade school we all learn rules of capitalization. Some crazy marketers think that these rules are booooring. And so they have developed their own rules.

A nice pop culture example is Prince who titles his songs with things like “I would die for U” and “Nothing Compares 2 U”.

Corporate / Tech people do it as well:

SoftMed
LanVision
SoapVision
RatBlender
pcAnywhere

There is a name for this and they are called studlycaps. Here is the definition:
“A hackish form of silliness similar to BiCapitalization for trademarks, but applied randomly and to arbitrary text rather than to trademarks. ThE oRigiN and SigNificaNce of thIs pRacTicE iS oBscuRe.”

If you are interested in what BiCapitalization is, see:

– www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/S/studlycaps.html
– www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/B/BiCapitalization.html
– www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/M/marketroid.html
– www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/J/Jeff-K-.html

The Jargon File has all sorts of interesting Hacker lore.