Title

All-Caps

Document Type

Working Paper

Publication Date

1-16-2020

SSRN Discipline

Economics Research Network; Legal Scholarship Network; Experimental & Empirical Studies eJournals; Law School Research Papers - Legal Studies; LSN Subject Matter eJournals; Financial Economics Network; Political Science Network

Abstract

A hallmark of consumer contracts is long blocks of capitalized text Courts and legislators believe that such "allcaps" clauses improve the quality of consumer consent and thus they will often require the capitalization of certain key terms in consumer contracts Some of the most important terms in consumer contracts "” warranty disclaimers liability releases arbitration clauses and automatic subscriptions "” will be enforced only because they appeared in allcaps in the contractbrbrThis Article is the first to empirically examine the effectiveness of allcaps with respect to the quality of consumer consent Using an experimental methodology the Article finds that allcaps is significantly harmful to older readers while failing to show any appreciable improvement over regular print for others We collect evidence from standard form agreements used by America's largest companies and find that despite "” and perhaps because "” allcaps is ineffective it is widely used in nearly threequarters of consumer contracts Based on these findings and other evidence reported here this Article lays out the dangers and risks of continued reliance on allcaps and calls for abandoning allcaps

Download

Share

COinS