University of West Florida

Academic Technology Center

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AskATC

The AskATC knowledge base has been created to answer your questions about designing, developing, implementing, and teaching online courses.

Need help with your course?

Contact Our Instructional Designers:
Karen Barth:
E-mail: kbarth@uwf.edu
Phone: 850-473-7291
John Crane:
E-mail: jcrane@uwf.edu
Phone: 850-473-7239
Cindy Mersereau:
E-mail: cmersereau@uwf.edu
Phone: 850-474-3291
June Watkins:
E-mail: jwatkins1@uwf.edu
Phone: 850-474-3165

Font Style

ALL CAPS

People use ALL CAPS for one of two reasons; to indicate a heading, or to indicate importance.

Screen readers can't identify all caps as a heading, so it will not organize the page content by proper headings.
All caps is the text equivalent of yelling, and is improper netiquette.
- Since all caps is not acceptable in discussions, it should not be used in content or news items.
All caps make distinguishing letters and words more difficult.
- Words can be identified more quickly and easily in upper and lower case.
- This is the reason the government has mandated that all street and Interstate signs be changed to Upper and lower case by 2018.

Underlined Text

HTML standards use underlined text on a web page to indicate a hyper- link. Underlined text that is not a hyper- link may confuse or frustrate students as it will appear to be a broken link.

DO: use bold and/or italics for emphasis
DO NOT: underline text for emphasis or to indicate a heading
- Especially do not use ALL CAPS!