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where did capital letters come from? why did they develop? are they any more than a device of punctuation?
reason for preferring small letters to capital letters - they have more curves
relationship between language and thought - we dont think in capital letters hmmm...capital letters, like spaces, are the result of the technologising of the word. As written, where the receiver is not present, nor can their nature be known, language demands more elaboration, it must be less densely packed, less implicit. Hence capital letters to show names or starts, spaces to break up words (there are no spaces in spoken language; try listening to someone speaking a language you don't understand) historically, capital letters are probably a result of a fushion of carved and inked written forms, the carved form becoming co-oped to serve a new purpose (ie clarity) as increased popularity and further technologising of written language made smaller the amount that writers could assume about their readers. but this is a guess, it could certainly be looked up! on all this a must read is Walter Ong 'Orality and Literacy' Last Modified 2/21/05 6:01 AM |
