Camel Case or Title Case?

I heard the phrase "Camel Case" this week....I always thought it was a slang term for using title case: you know, where you capitalize the first letter of every major word in a title. I thought we called that "Camel Case" because the letters humped up and down like a camel.

Turns out that I'm wrong: CamelCaseUsesNoSpacesBetweenWords! (per the wikipedia definition -- link above.)

• This is Title Case.
• ThisIsCamelCase.

Camel case is principally a naming convention for programming languages -- but we saw the camel case convention rather frequently in the 1980's and 1990's to lend a"new and hip look" to mostly tech companies and products. Think of eBay, CompuServe, PageMaker, PlayStation, etc.

And then, the camel case practice went mainstream for non-tech companies and products: PriceWaterhouseCoopers, DaimlerChrysler, and SpongeBob SquarePants.

And when ye olde Radio Shack changed its spelling to "RadioShack" in 1996....you gotta wonder. What benefit does a company get from using Camel v. Title? How does Camel v. Title make you, the consumer, feel about the product or company? What image are you trying to project when you use the camel?

Does the camel imply "new, technical, connected, and hip"? Or is the practice getting a little dated and tired? ¶ 9/25/2005 06:18:00 PM