A hallmark of consumer contracts is their use of long blocks of capitalized text. These “all‐caps” clauses are meant to alert consumers to nonstandard, risky, or important aspects of the transaction that would otherwise be hidden in the fine print. Based on a belief in the power of all‐caps, courts will often deny enforcement of many key terms—such as warranty disclaimers, liability releases, arbitration clauses, and automatic billing—unless they are presented in all‐caps. This article is the first to empirically examine the effectiveness of all‐caps. Using an experimental methodology, the article finds that all‐caps fail to appreciably improve consent. Moreover, some evidence suggests that all‐caps are harmful to older consumers. We collect evidence from standard form agreements used by the largest companies in the United States and find that, despite its limitations, three‐quarters of consumer contracts contain at least one all‐caps paragraph. Based on these findings and other evidence reported here, this article lays out the dangers and risks of continued reliance on all‐caps and calls for abandoning all‐caps.

中文翻译：

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全大写

消费者合同的标志是他们使用大块大写文本。这些“全部上限”条款旨在提醒消费者注意交易中不规范，有风险或重要的方面，否则这些方面将隐藏在细则中。基于对全部股本权力的信念，法院通常会拒绝执行许多关键条款，例如保修免责声明，责任免除，仲裁条款和自动开票，除非这些条款在全部股本中都有体现。本文是第一篇从实证角度考察全市值有效性的文章。通过实验方法，本文发现大写字母未能明显改善同意率。此外，一些证据表明，大盘股对年长的消费者有害。我们从美国最大的公司使用的标准格式协议中收集证据，发现，尽管有其限制，但四分之三的消费者合同至少包含一个全大写段落。根据这些发现和此处报告的其他证据，本文列出了继续依赖全部股本的危险和风险，并呼吁放弃全部股本。