@mwichary I've moved the block back: Here's a CAPITAL SHOUTING from 1816, 40 years earlier than my previous find: https://www.newspapers.com/clip/30653178/earliest_known_use_of_capitals_for/ …
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Replying to @GlennF
Hm. Ockham Razor: Couldn’t it be emphasis in this case…?
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It seems like more of a printing joke there. A voice coming from a pile of capital letters would have to speak in all caps.
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Replying to @thomasafine @mwichary
Yes, but the notion that VOICE reproduced in capitals implied louder seems to be significant. The previous sentence notes that bells tolled to “loudly” confirm the hour, then the VOICE spoke.
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Replying to @GlennF @thomasafine
To my eyes, FWIW, that feels much more tenuous of a connection. But also, I’m curious: is there much use in finding an earlier discovery that’s a one-off, disconnected from a later trend? (Ties into a larger theme I’m struggling with of the value of the “first.”)
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Replying to @mwichary @thomasafine
Finding context is very hard in which people say, “I am using this in this way to express this emotion/emphasis.” So finding an example in which someone fairly clearly uses CAPITALS to indicate emphasis within a text and in an allegorical way is at least a precursor.
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At some point before 1856, when my previously found earliest usage (in which someone says, “shouted in capital letters”), this became convention. Was it convention 40 years earlier? This would indicate there was some association.
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But there's no specific way to know if it's one-off. If I can find more connective tissue between 1816 and 1856, that would be helpful. We only have some fraction of newspapers and books digitized. And the majority of uses would be implicit, not explicit in the text.
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Yeah, I guess that’s the implicit value – moving the goalpost might help to find connective tissue (or prove its absence) in the future!
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This one also feels interesting since it’s not dialogue!
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