Capital letters or majuscules (pronounced /məˈdʒʌskjuːlz, ˈmædʒəskjuːlz/) are the larger of two type faces in a script. In the Roman alphabet The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was borrowed and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome, whose alphabet was then adapted and further modified by the ancient they are A, B, C, D, etc. They are also called capitals (caps) or upper case (uppercase). The latter name comes from the antique age of setting type for printing presses, when printers kept the type for these letters in the upper drawers of a desk or in the upper type case, while keeping the type for the more frequently-used smaller Lower case , minuscule, or small letters are the smaller form of letters, as opposed to upper case or capital letters, as used in European alphabets (Greek, Latin, Cyrillic, and Armenian). For example, the letter "a" is lower case while the letter "A" is upper case letters in the lower type case. This practice could date back to Johannes Gutenberg Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg was a German goldsmith and printer who introduced modern book printing. His invention of mechanical movable type printing started the Printing Revolution and is widely regarded the most important event of the modern period. It played a key role in the development of the Renaissance, Reformation and the, but nobody really knows.
Capital and minuscule letters are differentiated in the Roman The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was borrowed and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome, whose alphabet was then adapted and further modified by the ancient, Greek The Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It is the first and oldest alphabet in the narrow sense that it notes each vowel and consonant with a separate symbol. It is as such in continuous use to this day. The letters were also used to represent, Cyrillic Cyrillic script is an alphabet developed in the 9th century in Bulgaria, and used in the Slavic national languages of Belarusian, Bulgarian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, Macedonian, Montenegrin and Ukrainian, and in the non-Slavic languages of Moldovan, Kazakh, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Tuvan, and Mongolian. It also was used in past languages of Eastern, Armenian The Armenian alphabet is an alphabet that has been used to write the Armenian language since the year 405 or 406. It was devised by Saint Mesrop Mashtots, an Armenian monk, and contained 36 letters. Two more letters, օ and ֆ, were added in the Middle Ages. Until the 19th century, Classical Armenian was the literary language; since then, the, and Coptic alphabets The Coptic alphabet is the script used for writing the Coptic language. The repertoire of glyphs is based on the Greek alphabet augmented by letters borrowed from the Demotic and is the first Alphabetic Script used for the Egyptian Language. There are in fact several Coptic alphabets as the Coptic writing system may vary greatly among the various. Many less widely-used writing systems Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that the reader must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to comprehend the text. In contrast, other possible symbolic systems such as information signs, painting, maps and mathematics often do not require prior knowledge of a spoken (such as those used in the Georgian language The Georgian alphabet is the writing system currently used to write the Georgian language and other South Caucasian (Kartvelian) languages (Mingrelian, Svan and sometimes Laz), and occasionally other languages of the Caucasus (such as Ossetic and Abkhaz in the 1940s). The Georgian language has phonemic orthography and the modern alphabet has, Glagolitic The Glagolitic alphabet , also known as Glagolitsa, is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. The name was not coined until many centuries after its creation, and comes from the Old Slavic glagolъ "utterance" (also the origin of the Slavic name for the letter G). The verb glagoliti means "to speak". It has been conjectured that the, Arabic The Arabic alphabet or Arabic abjad is the script used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa, such as Arabic and Urdu. After the Latin alphabet, it is the second-most widely used alphabet around the world, Hebrew The Hebrew alphabet , known variously by scholars as the Jewish script, square script, block script, and because of its place of origin, the Assyrian script (not to be confused with the Syriac alphabet). The alphabet is used in the writing of the Hebrew language, as well as other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Ladino, and Judeo-Arabic, and Devanagari Devanagari , also called Nagari (Nāgarī, the name of its parent writing system), is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal. It is written from left to right, does not have distinct letter cases, and is recognizable by a distinctive horizontal line running along the tops of the letters that links them together. Devanāgarī is the main script) make no distinction between capital and lowercase letters - a system called unicase A unicase or unicameral alphabet is one that has no case for its letters. Tamil, Arabic, Old Hungarian, Hebrew, Georgian and Hangul are unicase alphabets, while Latin, Greek, Cyrillic and Armenian have two cases for each letter, e.g., A/a, Ж/ж, Ω/ω, etc. Rules for case usage vary — apart from the general rule of capitalizing the first word. Indeed, even European languages, except for Ancient Greek Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning the Archaic , Classical (c. 5th–4th centuries BC), and Hellenistic (c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD) periods of ancient Greece and the ancient world. It is predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek. Its Hellenistic phase is known as Koine (& did not make this distinction before about the year 1300. Both "majuscule" and "minuscule" letters existed, but the printing press A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium , thereby transferring the ink. Typically used for texts, the invention and spread of the printing press are widely regarded as the most influential event in the second millennium AD, revolutionizing the way people conceive and describe had not been invented, yet, and a given handwritten document could use either one size/style or the other. However, realize that before about 1700, literacy Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read and write. It is a concept claimed and defined by a range of different theoretical fields. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization defines literacy as the "ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and use printed and was very low in Europe and the Americas The Americas, or America, are the lands of the Western hemisphere or New World, comprising the continents of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions. America may be ambiguous in English, as it is more commonly used to refer to the United States of America. The Americas cover 8.3% of the Earth's total surface area (, hence even handwriting was not used or understood by more than about one percent of people. Therefore, there was not any motivation to use both upper case and lower case letters in the same document: all documents were for the use of a few scholars, anyway.
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History
Historically, the majuscule glyphs preceded the minuscules, which evolved from the majuscules for use in cursive Cursive is any style of handwriting that is designed for writing notes and letters quickly by hand. In the Arabic, Latin, and Cyrillic writing systems, the letters in a word are connected, making a word one single complex stroke. The word "cursive" comes from the Latin cursivus, meaning "flowing" writing. In Western European writing they can be divided into four eras:
- Greek majuscule (9th – 3rd century B.C.) in contrast to the Greek uncial script Uncial is a majuscule script commonly used from the 3rd to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Greek scribes. Uncial letters are written in either Greek, Latin, or Gothic (3rd century B.C. – 12 century A.D.) and the later Greek minuscule
- Roman majuscule Roman square capitals, also called inscriptional capitals, elegant capitals and quadrata, are an ancient Roman form of writing, and the basis for modern capital letters (7th century B.C. – 4th century A.D.) in contrast to the Roman uncial (4th – 8th century B.C.), Roman Half Uncial, and minuscule
- Carolingian The Carolingian dynasty was a Frankish noble family with its origins in the Arnulfing and Pippinid clans of the 7th century. The name "Carolingian", Medieval Latin karolingi, an altered form of an unattested Old High German *karling, kerling (meaning "descendant of Charles", cf. MHG kerlinc), derives from the Latinised name of majuscule (4th – 8th century A.D.) in contrast to the Carolingian minuscule Carolingian or Caroline minuscule is a script developed as a writing standard in Europe so that the Roman alphabet could be easily recognized by the small literate class from one region to another. It was used in Charlemagne's empire between approximately 800 and 1200. Codices, pagan and Christian texts, and educational material were written in (around 780 – 12th century)
- Gothic The Gothic alphabet is an alphabetic writing system attributed to Ulfilas which was used exclusively for writing the ancient Gothic language. Before its creation in the fourth century, the Goths had used runes to write their language. The new alphabet was created by Ulfilas for the purpose of translating the Christian Bible into Gothic, and it is majuscule (13th and 14th century), in contrast to the early Gothic (end of 11th to 13th century), Gothic (14th century), and late Gothic (16th century) minuscules.
Usage
In alphabets with a case distinction, capitals are used for capitalization Capitalization is writing a word with its first letter as a majuscule (upper-case letter) and the remaining letters in minuscules (lower-case letters), in those writing systems which have a case distinction. The term is also used for the choice of case in text, acronyms Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations that are formed using the initial components in a phrase or name. These components may be individual letters or parts of words (as in Benelux). There is no universal agreement on the precise definition of the various terms (see nomenclature), nor on written usage (see orthographic styling). While popular, and emphasis A means of emphasis that does not have much effect on “blackness” is the use of italics, where the text is written in a script style, or the use of oblique, where the vertical orientation of all letters is slanted to the left or right. With one or the other of these techniques , words can be highlighted without making them stand out much from (in some languages).
Capital letters were sometimes used for typographical emphasis in text made on a typewriter. However, long spans of Latin-alphabet text in all upper-case are harder to read because of the absence of the ascenders In typography, an ascender is the portion of a minuscule letter in a Latin-derived alphabet that extends above the mean line of a font. That is, the part of a lower-case letter that is taller than the font's x-height and descenders In typography, a descender is the portion of a letter in a Latin alphabet that extends below the baseline of a font found in lower-case letters, which can aid recognition. With the advent of modern computer editing technology and the Internet The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by a broad array of electronic and, emphasis is usually indicated by use of a single word Capital, italic In typography, italic type is a cursive typeface based on a stylized form of calligraphic handwriting. Owing to the influence from calligraphy, such typefaces often slant slightly to the right. Different glyph shapes from roman type are also usually used—another influence from calligraphy. It is distinct therefore from oblique type, in which the, or bold font, similar to what has long been common practice in print. In typesetting, when an acronym Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations that are formed using the initial components in a phrase or name. These components may be individual letters or parts of words (as in Benelux). There is no universal agreement on the precise definition of the various terms (see nomenclature), nor on written usage (see orthographic styling). While popular or initialism requires a string of upper-case letters, it is frequently set in small capitals In typography, small capitals are uppercase (capital) characters set at the same height and weight as surrounding lowercase (small) letters or text figures. They are used in running text to prevent capitalized words from appearing too large on the page, and as a method of emphasis or distinctiveness for text alongside or instead of italics, or, to avoid overemphasizing the word in mostly lower-case running text. In electronic communications The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by a broad array of electronic and, it is often considered very poor "netiquette Netiquette is a set of social conventions that facilitate interaction over networks, ranging from Usenet and mailing lists to blogs and forums. These rules were described in IETF RFC 1855. However, like many Internet phenomena, the concept and its application remain in a state of flux, and vary from community to community. The points most strongly" to type in all capitals In typography, all caps refers to text or a font in which all letters are capital letters, because it can be harder to read and because it is seen as tantamount to shouting. Indeed, this is the oft-used name for the practice. Larry Trask states that "it is possible to write an entire word or phrase in capital letters in order to emphasize it", but adds that "on the whole, though, it is preferable to express emphasis, not with capital letters, but with italics."[1]
Capitalization Capitalization is writing a word with its first letter as a majuscule (upper-case letter) and the remaining letters in minuscules (lower-case letters), in those writing systems which have a case distinction. The term is also used for the choice of case in text is the writing Writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols . It is distinguished from illustration, such as cave drawing and painting, and non-symbolic preservation of language via non-textual media, such as magnetic tape audio of a word A word is the smallest free form in a language, in contrast to a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning. A word may consist of only one morpheme (e.g. wolf), but a single morpheme may not be able to exist as a free form (e.g. the English plural morpheme -s) with its first letter A grapheme is a fundamental unit in a written language. Examples of graphemes include alphabetic letters, Chinese characters, numerical digits, punctuation marks, and the individual symbols of any of the world's writing systems in uppercase and the remaining letters in lowercase. Capitalization rules vary by language Language is a term most commonly used to refer to so-called "natural languages" — the spoken forms of communication ubiquitous among humankind. By extension the term also refers to the type of thought process which creates and uses language. Essential to both meanings is the systematic creation, maintenance and use of systems of and are often quite complex, but in most modern languages that have capitalization, the first word of every sentence In the field of linguistics, a sentence is an expression in natural language, often defined to indicate a grammatical and lexical unit consisting of one or more words that represent distinct concepts. A sentence can include words grouped meaningfully to express a statement, question, exclamation, request or command is capitalized, as are all proper nouns A noun can co-occur with an article or an attributive adjective. Verbs and adjectives can't. In the following, an asterisk in front of an example means that this example is ungrammatical. Some languages, such as German German (Deutsch, [ˈdɔʏtʃ] ) is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Globally, German is spoken by approximately 120 million native speakers and also by about 80 million non-native speakers, capitalize the first letter of all nouns; this was previously common in English English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into South-East Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria. Following the economic, political, military, scientific, cultural, and colonial influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 18th century, via as well. (See the article on capitalization Capitalization is writing a word with its first letter as a majuscule (upper-case letter) and the remaining letters in minuscules (lower-case letters), in those writing systems which have a case distinction. The term is also used for the choice of case in text for a detailed list of norms).
In some traditional forms of poetry, capitalization has been conventionally used as a marker to indicate the beginning of a line of verse A line in poetry is a unit of language into which a poem is divided which operates on principles which are distinct from and not necessarily coincident with grammatical structures such as the sentence or clauses in sentences. Although the word for a single poetic line is verse, this term now tends to be used to signify poetic form more generally independent of any other grammatical feature.
Other meanings
For paleographers Palaeography, also spelt paleography is the study of ancient writing. Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating historical manuscripts, and the cultural context of writing, including the methods with which writing and books were produced, and the history of scriptoria, a majuscule script is any script in which the letters have very few or very short ascenders and descenders, or none at all (for example, the majuscule scripts used in the Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209, or the Book of Kells The Book of Kells (Dublin, Trinity College Library, MS A. I. (58), sometimes known as the Book of Columba) is an illuminated manuscript Gospel book in Latin, containing the four Gospels of the New Testament together with various prefatory texts and tables. It was created by Celtic monks ca. 800 or slightly earlier. The text of the Gospels is).
See also
References
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Janine
ue, 06 Jul 2010 16:00:39 GM
Buchstabenmuseum in Berlin collects the discarded 3d letterforms of old signage. "The Museum of Letters is devoted to preserving and documenting letterforms. We are currently in the process of putting together our permanent collection ...
Q. What does it mean when you write in both lower and uppercase letters?
Asked by sparkinlis - Thu Aug 24 15:05:51 2006 - - 10 Answers - 0 Comments
A. You're a bit psychotic.
Answered by bretto24 - Thu Aug 24 15:07:03 2006
