thoughts about capitalization

[waddle]

I see that some words are often typed in all caps, even if they're not meant to be an acronym. A common example on these fora is "IVY", which should be properly capitalized as follows: "Ivy (League)". Or school names such as "UWISC"--properly written "U. Wisc." or some variation thereof.

What's the rationale behind this? I certainly don't mean to be a jerk, but it does seem as if the use of all caps for IVY is a bit pretentious, especially if all the other words in the post are properly capitalized. Is it because some people don't realize that "Ivy" isn't an acronym, or what?

[wtncffts]

I completely agree. I think it's usually used for emphasis, i.e., to highlight the school name or group of schools, in the Ivy case, as the important parts of the comment. I'm pretty sure people don't think Ivy is an acronym.