Right Case

Yesterday we talked about a principle that instills discipline - that is, Single Responsibility Principle (SRP). I am so hopeful that you use SRP - and use it to its deepest level - because of the value I have seen it produce in my own software engineering. I want those same benefits for you. Once you ignite that fire of discipline, it feeds upon itself and you won't be able ignore doing exactly the Right Thing. Trust me.

A software project is in some sense a series of choices - and whether you arrive at the Right System or something other than the Right System is entirely based on the summation of each and every one of those choices. And there are thousands of them...literally...but usually we can't operate with the level of awareness to see them all. But what I'm saying is that if you have a Discipline Practice, the implicit choices we make all day long...they will be the Right Choices because the device of discipline narrows your options to the right ones.

One of those choices is letter case in titles, captions, subjects, etc. And it's a choice we make multiple times throughout the day, every day of the project.

Title Case

Title Case is the capitalization of the first letter of every word in a title (or caption, subject, label) - except the articles, conjunctions, and prepositions. For example, "Blockchain is the next post" in Title Case is "Blockchain Is the Next Post".

In case I'm at risk of losing your interest in the f'n case of text - let me say clearly: this is important stuff. It is a choice, one of the thousands, and this one is actually a pretty frequent choice so if you compromise on it then you're making many compromises and pretty soon your project is off the Right Path and on the Compromise Path...and you know by now that does not end in the Right System. So please continue reading...this is important stuff.

Why does it matter whether my titles are in title case?

Title Case is faster to read, faster to get the point across. There is science behind this, but the basic idea is that neurologically we execute our pattern-making MUCH faster and efficiently when our eyes scan over Title Case. Or simply, Title Case gets the point across better and more completely. And since our world, our reality, is evermore about text communication (vs. voice) how fast and effectively you communicate that text is a big part of the success/failure equation.

Title Case encourages more concise and clear titles. If you're writing a title in Title Case, you have to think more carefully about a short and clear way to say what you're getting after. For example, "Users in France gets invalid date format this morning when using Edge, but not when using Chrome". This is not a joke example...this is the common form I see in support tickets. And it ain't all that bad...it captures some facts. But it is NOT a good title. It's appropriate to write details in this form, but NOT titles. Let's rewrite this title more concisely and clearly: "Date Format Error for Edge Browsers in France". Read those two titles a few times...you see what I'm preaching here?

Title Case encourages you to be of service to the reader. It encourages you to think: "How will the reader best understand what I'm trying to get across?" You really want to be thinking this way. Not to be a good guy - although nothing wrong with that - but because anything else is a compromise. Anything else is you saying (knowingly or not) that you don't really care whether your communication is completely understood, maximally acted upon, reaches it full potential for value to the software project.

And I guess this has led us to the real point of the post...that I hadn't fully grokked until just now. If you're totally dedicated to producing the Right System then you MUST do everything with a mindset of How Do I Best Help the Project Right Now. Using Title Case is an easy way to pick up huge benefit to the system, to the end goal: a successful project, a happy customer, good work.

Conclusion

In this post we talked about how Title Case encourages better communication - and that in this world of constant communication, better communication is huge. I'm not embarrassed to say that it took me years to always remember the rules of Title Case. I encourage you to use services like TitleCase.com to generate your titles until you just instinctively know the rules. But whatever you do, I hope you starting writing your titles the Right Way.