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Capitalization in the middle of a word (or name) is an irregularity that entered into usage after fonts with distinct uppercase and lowercase lettering developed. Often the result of many words being smushed together, it is used in a variety of ways to distinguish the words used. We call this CamelCase because the resulting words lookLike theHumps onTheBackOf aCamel.

Common reasons for Creators to use CamelCase are trademarks, Funetik Aksents, or programming limitations.

The first letter is not required to be capitalized to fit this trope, but in the case of Wiki Words on TV Tropes, it generally is.


Examples in Fiction:

  • In programming, it is a useful style for defining multi-word variables, so you can give a succinct idea of what said variable is supposed to do, instead of having to write lengthy comments about them in the function in which they're being used, mainly because usually you can't have a space in a variable name. In other languages, such as LISP, the preferred convention is caravan-case, as LISP does not use infix syntax (thus freeing the hyphen), and caravan-case is generally seen as easier to read.
  • Corporations have different reasons for CamelCasing:
    • If they string together two or more common nouns, the new word can be trademarked.
    • When two or more predecessor companies are merged into one new one (also for trademark purposes).
  • Digimon uses this style for species derivatives.
  • Twitter hashtags containing multiple words remove spaces and keep the first letter of each word capitalized (e.g. #TVTropes) for programming requirements and to avoid The Problem with Pen Island.
  • A character in the Animorphs book series, who was something of an ethereal being who didn't so much "speak" as "telepathically slam his thoughts into your brain," had his dialogue rendered without spaces, to show them as a Motor Mouth (as in, "doesn't bother to breathe").
  • Used for most document names on classicthemes.com (e.g., the page on finding episodes of old TV shows).
  • Some people's names have capitalized letters in the middle of the name.
  • The Hebrew name of the Song of Songs would usually be Shir haShirim because Latin script transcription of Hebrew often uses CamelCase when a title includes a noun that begins with a definite article, the prepositions "to", "as", "-ly", "in" and "from", and "and", as they are written as part of the word in the respective writing systems they use: שיר (shir) is "song", השיר (hashir) - ‘the song’. Other systems might hyphenate, using ha-Shirim instead; this convention is often used for Arabic (e.g. Al-Qur'an and not AlQur'an).
  • DanceDanceRevolution is officially stylized as DanceDanceRevolution, i.e. with no spaces.

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