Anti-pattern · Type & icons · Medium
All-Caps Labels
All-caps labels are overused uppercase micro-labels — eyebrows, nav items and buttons — that shout everywhere and therefore emphasise nothing.
The tell
Three or more tiers of text in uppercase with letter-spacing, often the same size as body copy.
Why it happens
Uppercase reads as "designed" and is heavily used in the agency-style templates that dominate training data. It is also an easy way to fake hierarchy without committing to a type scale.
The rule
Uppercase belongs to exactly one tier. Everything else uses sentence case and weight.
- Pick one tier for caps — the eyebrow above a heading is the usual choice.
- Convert navigation and button labels to sentence case.
- Add tracking of 0.08em or more to whatever keeps the caps; never set caps tight.
What is a All-Caps Labels?
Uppercase with wide tracking is a real technique for tiny labels, and models apply it to everything: navigation, buttons, eyebrows, table headers, card titles. When every label shouts, none of them lead. Keep caps for one tier — usually the eyebrow above a heading — and let everything else take normal sentence case with weight doing the work.
Paste this after your existing prompt to strip the pattern from the result.