(I don’t read German). — “Caps+lowercases” should be used for texts to be read as content.
We read this mixture everyday for years. Emphasis with caps in a text is perhaps too much, but a Sanserif companion of a Serif font doesn’t work either, fake italics in certains case either too, very light semibold either too, its really depending what kind of things you design. — - “Caps only” should be used for text to be seen as image.
In some cases, monumental signs on a building, a brand, etc. Caps work better than the usual caps+lowercases. For a couple of words, caps are very good in certain cases, and even can be very beautiful, they offer a very nice appareance on a page. Just recall Roman inscriptions and Bodoni titling pages…

Don’t be strictly against caps as some people use them too much. Its not productive. Design is more subtle than just trying to be against some practises.

I don’t know that its a readability issue, more a psychological one, because text in all caps is universally interpreted as shouting, rude and brash.

Google adwords is good evidence to suggest that all-caps is the exact opposite of what people want to see.

Are all caps less legible than mixed caps? Yes. Are they so illegible that the viewer can never decipher the word? Definitely not. I see no problems in using all caps for headlines and short sentences.

I’ll use all caps for short, two or three word lines from time to time. For lines longer than that, I’ll usually opt for small caps.

If all caps were so hard to read (as awful as a paragraph is made to look with them), I’d think that business people ignorant of our distaste for it wouldn’t use them. It seems like a highly contextual thing to argue about.

I wouldn’t want to handicap myself by jettisoning caps as magazine coverlines, for instance. Long live caps. Even big stacked wadges of caps look ok if done properly.

I agree. ALL CAPS has its place in the world of design, but the designer needs to be aware of proper kerning, leading and typeface selection.

Without getting too heady, all caps type is harder to read generally in paragraphs, because the eye uses the upper lower case forms to enhance readability. The upper lowercase type informs where a sentence starts, differentiates better between certain characters like O’s and Q’s (o q).

Obviously, some ulc fonts do a poor job of differentiation such as Avant Garde and Lubalin where the o, a, c, d, p, b, q, g, are hard to distinguish at book-weight sizes.

I remember my teacher at the art academy being in love with long blocks of caps, very carefully spaced. And though I agree that the legibility diminishes, I would hesitate to ban it from my typographic toolbox. As Ricky Irvine said, it all depends on context.

I feel that CAPS is one of the colors in our pallette.
You can use them to shout, as mentioned above. But spaced widely or using a very light or even thin letter it says something else.

As with all, don’t overdo it and never use it without a good reason.

Personaly I use it as an image. It stacks better than lowercasts. But it becomes even more difficult to read then.