Comments on: Stop yelling at me

By: Michael Good

Michael Good — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 13:33:31 +0000

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.

By: Cherie Young

Cherie Young — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 23:36:13 +0000

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.

By: Brian Boero

Brian Boero — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 03:14:46 +0000

@Jay

I recognize that as newspaper-ese. I am hoping that will fade away soon!

By: Qkarmark

Qkarmark — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 17:52:48 +0000

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.

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:18:09 +0000

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.

By: Melissa DelGaudio

Melissa DelGaudio — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:28:46 +0000

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.

By: Jeff Gingerich

Jeff Gingerich — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:18:12 +0000

Drives me insane. I think ignorance is the only rational explanation.

By: Spencer Rascoff

Spencer Rascoff — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:07:14 +0000

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…

By: Kori Covrigaru

Kori Covrigaru — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 20:35:07 +0000

I WAS JUST “YELLED AT” IN AN EMAIL. I DON’T FEEL LIKE ANSWERING…

By: Jay Thompson

Jay Thompson — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 21:24:46 +0000

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.