CamelCase
Programmers have always liked CamelCase, but now marketers are making it trendy.
Mignon Fogarty
CamelCase (also known as medial capitals, intercaps, humpbacking, CapWords, and BiCapitalials, among other names) is the practice that has now become trendy of promoting a letter in the middle of a word to uppercase.
CamelCase Examples
Most often the capital letter in the middle seems to result from squishing two words together that would normally be separated by a space (e.g., MySpace), but occasionally the capital just seems to pop up at a convenient syllable (e.g., OutKast).
CamelCase History
Although the phenomenon can be traced back to at least the 1950s, it gained steam among computer programmers (probably because spaces are often discouraged or disallowed in programming, so a convenient way to highlight multiple words in a file name or variable is to capitalize the first letter of each squished-together word). More recently, marketers decided it was a trendy way to make a company name stand out.
CamelCase Use
If a formal company name uses CamelCase (e.g., YouTube, PayPal, TiVo), use that form in your writing; but other than honoring official names, leave the camel at the zoo–don’t go around calling a plain old help desk a HelpDesk. It’s UnNecessary!
(Note: Some people call it Pascal case if the first letter is capitalized: “PascalCase” instead of “camelCase.”
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About the Author
Mignon Fogarty is the founder of Quick and Dirty Tips and the author of seven books on language, including the New York Times bestseller “Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing.” She is an inductee in the Podcasting Hall of Fame, and the show is a five-time winner of Best Education Podcast in the Podcast Awards. She has appeared as a guest expert on the Oprah Winfrey Show and the Today Show. Her popular LinkedIn Learning courses help people write better to communicate better.