All‐Caps

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.