As self-confessed serial scrollers, we're making the case for CamelCase.

Everything has a hashtag these days. Post a selfie? #Selfie. Feeling brave enough to vlog a speedy turn about the park in your lycra? #Healthy, #Fitness. Made a fabulous shakshuka with free-range eggs and organic parsley? #Brunch, #Brunching, #Brunched.

Thing is, hashtags have become so much a part of the way we communicate both interpersonally and in a marketing sense, we don’t tend to think that much about them in a technical way. Most people simply hashtag by eliminating spaces between words to create a hybrid word: think # veganfood, #digitalmarketing or #kingcharlesspaniel. Many people simply decode the sewn-together hybrid hashtag word, and fill in the spaces ourselves, even if we do run into problems sometimes with ones like #catscan (is someone having a cat scan? Or are we being empowering about the capabilities of cats?) or #taken (has something been stolen, or has affable old Ken from next door got your bins in for you?).

These run-on words aren’t the only problem with our standard-style hashtag systems on social media. Many people with dyslexia and literacy differences struggle with the conglomerate nature of hashtags and how they simply stick words together, and struggle to read them. People who use screen readers run into problems frequently too, as their software often picks up these long hashtags as single words as opposed to conglomerate phrases, and it leads to some very strange text-to-speech results.

This is quite an issue when we consider just how much information is contained in hashtags these days. Many people denote things like adverts and paid promotion in tags, as well as making links to other movements and businesses that they’re connected with, and they’re becoming increasingly important for reaching out and connecting with people in an age where a lot of our socialisation has had to suddenly and swiftly become virtual.  

There is, however, an incredibly simple solution – and it’s to do with everyone’s favourite toothy desert mammal.

CamelCase is a hashtagging system that makes it easier for people who struggle to read sometimes to decode multi-word hashtags, as well as making it easier for screen readers to understand where one word ends and another begins. It’s easy to implement too – simply capitalise the first letter of every word in your hashtag. For example, #happybirthdaytome becomes #HappyBirthdayToMe, and #assistivetechnology becomes #AssistiveTechnology.

It’s a simple fix – named after the way its capital letters protrude just like the humps on a camel, it evolved into mainstream usage from the coding languages that computer programmers use to create software. It’s also known as PascalCase (although this means something slightly different in coding), Bicapitalisation / Bi-Capitalisation, InterCaps and Medial Capitals – and it’s an incredibly easy way to make sure that your hashtags are accessible for everyone. It's one of the many ways we can think about assistive systems on a personal level- as well as developing new technology and super-smart devices, we can use our input as people to make technology more accessible for everybody too.

It's simple, it's easy, it's accessible, and it (allegedly, we'll admit) looks a bit like a camel. What's not to love?

#HappyHashtagging!