Because life is suffering and joy is where you find it, I want to just take a moment to salute the selective-to-the-point-of-being-nonsensical capitalization that’s been happening in headlines on the website of the UK paper The Daily Mail. While the Mail needs no help achieving ridiculousness, these headlines push the site’s lurid stories gently over the edge.
As opposed to the SCREAMING ASSAULT/dramatic pause rhythm of MediaTakeout headlines (“GAY Male Instagram Star Announces That He Is Having A BABY . . . With His New STUD Girlfriend . . . We Are SO CONFUSED!!!”), which are brilliant in their own right, the Daily Mail likes to emphasize a word, maybe two, to underline the OUTRAGEOUS nature of its content as though your search for just that isn’t what LED you to the Mail in the FIRST place.
These caps choices often baffle me, they always tickle me, and they make me hear what I’m reading in a voice that’s a cross between a 5th grader who’s telling a story that knows is blowing his friends’ minds and Nancy Grace.
This one makes me hear Zombie 5th Grade Boy Nancy Grace:
To illustrate just how arbitrary these caps choices can be, let’s pick a word and look at how the others scream around it. Hmmm, what’s a totally neutral word that won’t at all get in the way of the ghost of a point I’m making here? “Penis”! YES! Great answer.
Now, you might THINK that the word PENIS would be THE ONE you’d want to emphasize when ushering someone to read your description of a TERRIBLE thing that happened to one of them. And your thinking would be correct SOMETIMES.
But PENIS isn’t always the star of the headline when there’s something even bigger or scarier to discuss:
Also, even when penis is doing the story’s heavy lifting, sometimes OTHER BODY PARTS need to be emphasized so they can shine bright like a penis, too:
Does PENIS SIZE matter?