Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: peter@pfox.demon.co.uk (Peter E Fox)
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!uhog.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!peernews.demon.co.uk!pfox.demon.co.uk!peter
Subject: Why and where from - Upper case
Organization: 4th Ridley Lancers:-)
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Date: Sun, 12 Mar 1995 21:29:07 +0000
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Don't you just hate it when a child asks a simple question which any
fool could have asked but you never thought of yourself - let alone
have any clue about the answer?


               Q: Why do we have capital letters?
               ----------------------------------

Question 1:
----------
The two things we are taught at school is that we put a capital at
the start of a sentence and for a proper noun.  Since we also have
full stops strictly speaking the first use is redundant. It is
difficult enough for some to get the hang of one 'a-b-c' without
having to learn the parallel 'A-B-C'.

I observe that capitalised words (or letters) are NEVER EVER
vocalised any differently to lower case 'ordinary' letters.  The
inter-sentence pause is a product of the punctuation marks.

What is the evolutionary mechanism for keeping this 'unnecessary'
feature?

Question 2:
----------
Where did the use of capitals originate?

Question 3:
----------
Is capitalisation just a greek-roman tradition?

Question 4:
----------
If there are textual languages without this feature then does this
prove the capital is redundant, or do they have other mechanisms
for flagging the start of a new phrase?  What about proper nouns?

Question 5:
----------
For the English alphabet, has there been a study of the development
of the letter forms into their present shape?


I'll be most obliged for any answers.  It is rather embarassing
to say "I don't know - never thought about it" to a curious
youngster.
-- 
Peter Fox
