What is the History of English Capitalization?
Well, You See, Freebird, what Happened is This: The People who continued to Use Silly-assed Capitalization were all Ostracised and, Indeed, Beaten to a Bloodied Pulp by the Angered Masses. Also, it is much easier to read all-lowercase. It “fits” the eye’s line-scanning better. Do you remember the primary-school exercise where you identified words by their “block shape” — you draw a line around the word and when you remove the letters, the shape of the blocky outline still gives you enough information to recognise “dog” from “rug.” Capital letters destroy that: “Dog” and “Rug” look the same, forcing the reader to rescan the word to differentiate the letters. Regardless the history of the change, you want to take serious consideration of your Most Annoying Habit if you wish to actually have people read your communications to us. The more difficult you make it to read what you write, the more you will find yourself being ignored.
I believe it was in an introduction to an edition of the Lewis & Clark diaries that I read that there was simply no rhyme or reason to English spelling or capitalization prior to the 19th century, which is why the intrepid Explorers varied their spelling and capitalization randomly (or so it seems). I expect Noah Webster with his dictionary work starting in the first third of the 19th century started working toward standardization.
Yes, handwriting followed print trends, more or less: contemporary manuscripts make that clear. But there are social dynamics there as well: an author might follow different rules when preparing a manuscript for publication, as opposed to writing a private letter to a peer. I believe it was in an introduction to an edition of the Lewis & Clark diaries that I read that there was simply no rhyme or reason to English spelling or capitalization prior to the 19th century, which is why the intrepid Explorers varied their spelling and capitalization randomly (or so it seems). That’s something of a gloss. If you focus on a particular period, rather than a grand sweep of pre-19th-c writing, then you can certainly identify rules-of-thumb. Personal writings are always going to be ‘rougher’, and the
I’m still listening, verstegan! It’s interesting to ponder the interplay between written and printed text – as mentioned above, there will surely be economic and technical factors which affect print first, then alter written styles indirectly. But your point about influence going the other way is interesting too. I wonder also if some of the changes we see in “modernity” have to do with this relationship. It seems as though method of generating the text (written vs. printed) is becoming a less fundamental distinction. Most of what I would have written a century ago – letters, prose, memos, etc – is now typed on a computer. So the distinction to look at is perhaps more one of “intent” and “formality”. This change also may speak to your last paragraph, about what’s percieved as making text “harder” or “easier” to read. There may be a change in the Volume and Kind of text that we read daily. Volume, in that we probably just read a hell of a lot more, so minor differences in reading “effic
