In the 1980s and early 1990s, the practice continued because messages were prepared for transmission by being typed or printed on a form that required an optical character recognition font which lacked lowercase letters. Even as messages moved fully into electronic production, the standard of having broadcast communication in all caps lived on, unhindered by progress. That’s because the Fleet Broadcast System’s message routing continued to rely on legacy systems that could only handle uppercase characters. Now that has changed with the introduction of a new message routing system based on cheaper, more modern technology, and message-writers can now feel free to mix it up and use lowercase text.
There is no word on where the Navy’s communication policy stands on emoticons, however.
via Ars Technica
June 13, 2013
