Capital letters

Encyclopedia : C : CA : CAP : Capital letters

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Capital letters or majuscules (in the Roman alphabet: A, B, C, ...) are one type of case in a writing system. Capital letters (also simply called capitals or caps) are also known as upper case; manual typesetters kept them in the upper drawers of a desk, keeping the more frequently used minuscule letters on the lower shelf. This practice may date back to Johann Gutenberg.

Some languages make no distinction between capital and lowercase letters. Latin, for one, was originally written using only one set of letters—those which we now call the capitals.

Usage

In alphabets with a case distinction, capitals are used for:

1. Capitalization,
2. Acronyms,
3. Better legibility, for example on signs and in labeling, and
4. Emphasis (in some languages).

Capital letters were sometimes used for typographical emphasis in text made on a typewriter. However, long spans of text in all uppercase are harder to read because of the absence of the ascenders and descenders found in lowercase letters, which can aid recognition. With the advent of modern computer editing technology and the Internet, emphasis is usually indicated by use of an italic or bold font, similar to what has long been common practice in print. When an acronym or initialism requires a string of uppercase letters, it is frequently set in small capitals, to avoid overemphasizing the word in mostly lowercase running text. (By contrast, the "small print" in legal documents is often capitalized to make it harder to read.) In electronic communications, it is often considered very poor "netiquette" to type in all capitals, because it can be harder to read and because it can be seen as tantamount to shouting. Indeed, this is the often-coined name for the practice.

Capitalization is the writing of a word with its first letter in upper-case and the remaining letters in lower-case. Capitalization rules vary by language and are often quite complex, but in most modern languages that have capitalization, the first word of every sentence is capitalized, as are all proper nouns. Some languages, such as German, capitalize the first letter of all nouns; this was previously common in English as well. (See the article on capitalization for a detailed list of norms).

Other meanings

Sometimes a manuscript itself is called Majuscule, for example the majuscule Codex Vaticanus.

See also

• Small caps
• Roman square capitals
• CamelCase

External links

• [Codex Vaticanus B/03] Detailed description of Codex Vaticanus with many images.
• [All-caps is harder to read]

 

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