![]() Imagine if we had to capitalize all nouns. Luxembourgish, a close relative of German and one of the three official languages of Luxembourg, also still uses capitalization of nouns to this day. It was also done in 18th century English (as with Gulliver's Travels and most of the original 1787 United States Constitution). This was also the practice in Danish before a spelling reform in 1948. Look at these words.At first I thought this was a silly question, but after researching it a bit I found that various languages have made concerted efforts to reduce the amount of capitalization over their histories, including English. They have different shapes:īut a word written all in capital letters has no special shape. And we recognize these words and phrases partly by their shape.Ī word written with small letters has a special "shape". ![]() Instead, we read whole words and phrases. When we read text, especially when we read fast, we do not read each individual letter. But all capital letters are the same height (BP). Some small letters have no ascender or descender. Some small letters have "descenders" (like the letter p). Some small letters have "ascenders" (like the letter b). Words written in capital letters have no "shape".For the same type size, capital letters are usually wider than small letters and therefore take up more space, causing the eye to travel further.In English, capital letters give us many visual clues, such as the start of a sentence or a proper noun.At least for native English speakers, children usually learn to read and write small letters before capital letters.Why are texts written completely in capitals more difficult to read than texts in the usual mix of capital and small letters? There are several reasons, including: Why is Solid Text in Capital Letters (ALL CAPS) Difficult to Read? Use capital letters ( sometimes!) for headings, titles of articles, books etc, and newspaper headlines: Use a capital letter for titles of books, poems, songs, plays, films etc:ġ1. the Orient Express, the Flying Scotsmanġ0.Use a capital letter for names of vehicles like ships, trains and spacecraft: Use a capital letter for places and monuments:ĩ. Use a capital letter for trade-marks and names of companies and other organizations:Ĩ. Use a capital letter for people's names and titles:ħ. Use a capital letter for countries, languages & nationalities, religions:Ħ. Use a capital letter for days of the week, months of the year, holidays:ĥ. or NATO or Nato (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)Ĥ. ![]() Use capital letters for many abbreviations and acronyms: Use a capital letter to begin a sentence or to begin speech:ģ. Use a capital letter for the personal pronoun 'I':Ģ. Lawyers, for example, know that capitals are difficult to read and that is why they often write contracts in capital letters! When do we Use Capital Letters?ġ. Did you ever see a book written in capital letters? Of course not! We cannot easily read lots of text in capital letters. A sentence or paragraph written in capitals is very difficult to read. It is not usual to write whole sentences in capitals. We always write the first person pronoun as a capital I. We use them mainly for the first letter of sentences, names, days and months as well as for some abbreviations. In English, we do NOT use capital letters very much. We can write each letter of the English alphabet as a small letter (abc.) or as a large or capital letter (ABC.). ![]()
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