๐ปHow Americans Use Capital Letters Online
๋ฏธ๊ตญ์ธ์ ์จ๋ผ์ธ์์ ๋๋ฌธ์๋ฅผ ์ด๋ป๊ฒ ์ธ๊น?
Something that often confuses English learners, especially Korean speakers, is how we use capital letters online. Since Korean doesnโt even have capital letters, it can be tricky to understand what they mean in English.
์์ด ํ์ต์๋ค, ํนํ ํ๊ตญ์ธ๋ค์ด ์์ฃผ ํท๊ฐ๋ฆฌ๋ ๋ถ๋ถ ์ค ํ๋๊ฐ ์จ๋ผ์ธ์์ ๋๋ฌธ์๋ฅผ ์ด๋ป๊ฒ ์ฐ๋๊ฐ์์. ํ๊ตญ์ด์๋ ๋๋ฌธ์ ๊ฐ๋
์ด ์์ด์ ์์ด์์ ๋๋ฌธ์๊ฐ ์ด๋ค ์๋ฏธ๋ก ์ฐ์ด๋์ง ์ดํดํ๊ธฐ ์ด๋ ค์ธ ์ ์์ด์.
You already know the basic grammar rules: capitalize proper nouns and the first word of every sentence. But online, capital letters do a lot more, they show emotion.
'๊ณ ์ ๋ช
์ฌ์ ๋ฌธ์ฅ์ ์ฒซ ๋จ์ด๋ ๋๋ฌธ์๋ก ์ด๋คโ๋ผ๋ ๊ธฐ๋ณธ ๋ฌธ๋ฒ ๊ท์น์ ์ด๋ฏธ ์๊ณ ์์ง์. ํ์ง๋ง ์จ๋ผ์ธ์์๋ ๋๋ฌธ์๊ฐ ๊ฐ์ ์ ๋๋ฌ๋ด๋ ๋ฑ ๋ ๋ง์ ์ญํ ์ ํด์.
Typing in ALL CAPS, like โHELLO! HOW ARE YOU?โ, usually sounds like shouting. It can seem rude or aggressive, but it isnโt always negative. It can also show excitement or sarcasm. For example, โI canโt WAIT to see you!โ means youโre really excited. But โOh, Iโm SORRY, I didnโt know you were tired,โ sounds sarcastic, as if you donโt actually mean it.
โHELLO! HOW ARE YOU?โ์ฒ๋ผ ๋ชจ๋ ๊ธ์๋ฅผ ๋๋ฌธ์๋ก ์ฐ๋ฉด ๋ณดํต ์๋ฆฌ์น๋ ๊ฒ์ฒ๋ผ ๋ค๋ ค์. ๋ฌด๋กํ๊ฑฐ๋ ๊ณต๊ฒฉ์ ์ผ๋ก ๋ณด์ผ ์๋ ์๋๋ฐ์, ํญ์ ๋ถ์ ์ ์ธ ๊ฑด ์๋์์. ํฅ๋ถ๋ ๊ฐ์ ์ด๋ ๋น๊ผฌ๋ ํค์ ํํํ ๋๋ ์จ์. ์๋ฅผ ๋ค์ด โI canโt WAIT to see you!โ๋ ์ ๋ง ๊ธฐ๋๋๋ค๋ ๋ป์ด์์. ๋ฐ๋๋ก โOh, Iโm SORRY, I didnโt know you were tiredโ๋ผ๋ ๋ง์ ์ง์ฌ์ด ์๋๋ผ ๋น๊ผฌ๋ ๋๋์ด ๋์.
Sometimes, people capitalize each word and add periods for dramatic effect. For example: โYou. Are. So. Pretty.โ This gives the sentence strong emotion, like each word is its own statement.
๋๋๋ก ์ฌ๋๋ค์ ๊ฐ์กฐ๋ฅผ ์ํด ๊ฐ ๋จ์ด๋ฅผ ๋๋ฌธ์๋ก ์ฐ๊ณ ๋ง์นจํ๋ฅผ ๋ถ์ด๊ธฐ๋ ํด์. You. Are. So. Pretty.โ ์ด๋ฐ ์์ผ๋ก์. ์ด๋ ๊ฒ ์ฐ๋ฉด ๋ง์น ๊ฐ ๋จ์ด๊ฐ ํ๋์ ๋ฌธ์ฅ์ฒ๋ผ ๋๊ปด์ง๊ณ , ๊ฐ์ ์ด ํจ์ฌ ๊ฐํ๊ฒ ์ ๋ฌ๋ผ์.
You might also see alternating capital and lowercase letters, such as โI aM vErY sMaRt.โ This style is used to make fun of someone or to sound mocking. Itโs not very common, but it appears in memes and YouTube comments.
๋ โI aM vErY sMaRtโ์ฒ๋ผ ๋๋ฌธ์์ ์๋ฌธ์๋ฅผ ๋ฒ๊ฐ์ ์ฐ๋ ๊ฒ๋ ๋ณผ ์ ์์ด์. ์ด ์คํ์ผ์ ๋๊ตฐ๊ฐ๋ฅผ ๋๋ฆฌ๊ฑฐ๋ ๋น๊ผฌ๋ ํค์ ๋ผ ๋ ์ฐ์ฌ์. ์์ฃผ ํํ ๊ฑด ์๋์ง๋ง, ๋ฐ์ด๋ ์ ํ๋ธ ๋๊ธ์์ ์ข
์ข
๋ณด์ฌ์.
Understanding how capital letters change tone can help you read messages more naturally and avoid misunderstandings. Online English isnโt just about words, itโs about attitude, too.
๋๋ฌธ์๊ฐ ํค์ ์ด๋ป๊ฒ ๋ฐ๊พธ๋์ง ์๋ฉด ๋ฉ์์ง๋ฅผ ๋ ์์ฐ์ค๋ฝ๊ฒ ์ดํดํ๊ณ ์คํด๋ฅผ ์ค์ผ ์ ์์ด์. ์จ๋ผ์ธ ์์ด๋ ๋จ์ด๋ฟ ์๋๋ผ ๋งํฌ์ ํ๋๊น์ง ๋ด๊ฒจ ์์ด์. |