1 Apr 2025

Capital punishment? Why Gen-Z loves lowercase 

From Nights, 8:30 pm on 1 April 2025

Have you noticed that young people are ditching capital letters in favour writing in all lowercase? 

In one well publicised instance, capitalisation was omitted in an email dismissing over nine-hundred people from a publicly listed workplace. 
 
Dr Andreea Calude is associate professor of linguistics at University of Waikato.

She joins Emile Donovan to discuss how lowercase writing reflects a generational shift - and what it means for language. 

Photo: Unslpash