Why do so many agents use all caps for property descriptions?
Just now I was looking at some design comps our designer created against a live implementation of her work. The live property detail page was marred by a massive block of all-caps nonsense.
Someone please tell me there’s a crazy but nonetheless adhered to reason for this. Please?
Or maybe some agents, in their sheer enthusiasm, just can’t help but put the pedal to the metal. Maybe?
Or perhaps this is a vestigial trace of some long-ago training class zinger? Any chance?
Seriously: Would every broker in America please forbid this? Now?
It’s embarrassing.
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I asked one of our clients a while back. Their reasoning was that it was difficult for them to see the text on the computer, so they always write in all caps.
I ASKED ONE OF OUR CLIENTS A WHILE BACK. THEIR REASONING WAS THAT IT WAS DIFFICULT FOR THEM TO SEE THE TEXT ON THE COMPUTER, SO THEY ALWAYS WRITE IN ALL CAPS.
Hmmm……
Its mostly laziness – or perhaps functional illiteracy.
Some of the old-timers are guilty of it because they don’t understand that the new-fangled MLS doesn’t require it, unlike the older dialup DOS databases that were used before the internet took over.
Bring back the MLS books!!!
I am sure that some of has to do with agents in the habit, but blame should be spread to the MLS’s that still convert descriptions to all CAPS no matter how it is input.
@Jeb
Really? How common is that?
From a design/editorial point of view (research and statistics have proven it), all caps are much more difficult to read. For this reason alone, upper/lower case type should always be used when writing descriptions of products or services.
Having a systems background, I suspect this is a legacy MLS data entry issue to speed entry. Hopefully the practice will fade.
@Jeff
Thanks for the input. If this is the case, then any MLS vendor forcing this on customer should be ashamed of themselves.
Or misspellings! It drives me completely crazy that agents still have so many spelling errors in their description. You have a computer, with a spell check, please use it. Marketing the home for your seller with spelling mistakes is very unprofessional when a computer can do most of the work for you.
Actually, what Jeb mentioned is more common than you might think. If I had to estimate, I’d say that 1 out of every 5 MLS’s I load into our system gives us all caps for _every field_. City, description, community, you name it. I title cap the city and other appropriate fields as I can, but there’s really nothing I can do about the description without upsetting either the MLS or a whole cadre of agents whose computers are stuck in permanent caps lock mode.
Brian,
Not sure this is forced by the MLS vendor any longer. Can’t speak for all markets but in our market the entry tool was an old character based interface. This is no longer the case as a web-based interface is now used that does not force all caps. The practice of entering descriptions in all caps still remains in a lot of offices however. usually translated to sentence case for the web. Old habits die hard I guess.
Our MLS requires it, not sure why but they do a lot of things that I am not in agreement with.
Brian, it was required on our MLS up until a few years ago.
Some Realtors are slow to change habits.
Then they copy and paste their comments on other sites and they go in all caps.
I’VE NEVER UNDERSTOOD THIS EITHER BRIAN. IT’S A REAL PET PEEVE OF MINE.
Here’s another thing that I don’t get when it comes to what’s put into listings and descriptions:
3/2 MBR DS OFP. IG SW PT POOL. LR FP. NEW TR
This translates to 3 bedroom, 2 bath with master bed room downstairs in an open floor plan. There is an in-ground salt water PebbleTech pool. Fireplace is in the living room.
I had to call the listing agent and ask her what “New TR” meant. She said (with a tone like I am the idiot) “New tile roof”.
Most home buyers don’t keep the real estate secret decoder ring handy.
I WAS JUST “YELLED AT” IN AN EMAIL. I DON’T FEEL LIKE ANSWERING…
Ugh, this is such a pet peeve of mine. My mom, a technophobe, frequently sends me emails in all caps from her ancient AOL account. They’re almost unreadable.
The other related pet peeve is when people reply to emails without including the prior text. My mom sends me emails all the time that say things like “OK” or “Yes” because she doesn’t know how to reply with text. Sigh.
OK, enough about my mom…
Drives me insane. I think ignorance is the only rational explanation.
In addition to the dreaded ALL CAPS problem currently plaguing the nation’s MLSes, would someone please explain to agents that multiple exclamation points do *not* make their listing’s “SO MANY GR8 FEATURES WE CAN’T LIST THEM ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!” any more exciting? How about carefully considering your words instead of wasting precious verbal real estate on garbage like that? Hmm? If we can vaccinate this little germ, maybe we can move on to the more serious issue of saying, “This one won’t last!” UGH.
Yelling in all CAPS is one form of rookie marketing.
As a starting point, all marketers should read Google Adwords Policies – It helps to simplify the message:
http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=guidelines.cs&topic=9271&subtopic=9277
Some examples:
Don’t use excessive capitalization such as ‘FREE’ or ‘GOOGLE ADWORDS.’
Stay within the ad character limits. – Less is More
Use correct grammar and spelling.
Use standard punctuation and symbols.
Avoid using generic superlatives.
Also, work on getting your message across in 140 characters or less – Use twitter to practice – If you need two tweets to get your message across you don’t know your message well enough.
I’m willing to bet that since early on when listing sheets became easy/popular back in the day, that they were prepared via regular ‘ol Remington’s and Olivetti’s…. hence making 200 photo copies of an analog ‘original’ likely yielded many of the lower case characters – which (let’s all agree here) were NEVER SAN-SERIF font faces – to become filled in and illegible… switching to all UPPERCASE would quickly solve this problem. Enthusiasm aside, the practice likely stuck due to laziness.
@Jay
I recognize that as newspaper-ese. I am hoping that will fade away soon!
It’s just bad manners, like talking with your mouth full. No matter how many times you tell someone not to chew and talk they still do it. Yes, even I fart in public, but no one knows who did it, less is better.
Why scream in emails? We all get hundreds of emails every week now, many that continue to say “Re:” in the subject line about 50 times. I think this says to you that you are not important enough to let you know what it is, and they are too important to take the time to give you a subject line.
Then there is the email that caps their name in the subject line, as if they have arrived.
Give them the handbook to internet manners and they will chew it up and talk with their mouth full.
This is one of my pet peeves. As a buyer I am looking at many listings on line. The listings in all caps don’t even get read by me. They are just too hard to read, plain and simple. I have been on line since the late 80′s and just find it hard to grasp why in this day and age anyone would submit text like that.
For you agents and realtors who practice this all caps stuff here is one buyers impression;
1. I think you are a rookie who just got your RE license.
2. You have never been on line before and are showing your ignorance.
3. You know the rules and refuse to following them.
4. Your just plain (dumb, arrogant, _______) fill in the blank.
In any case one or all of the above disqualifies you from ever getting my business. (If you can’t get this basic skill right I certainly won’t trust you with the purchase of my home)
BTW there are plenty of ways to convert all caps to sentence case. A free text processor like TextPad does the trick nicely.
Good luck with getting up to speed here.