![A (capital and small)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/A_%28capital_and_small%29.svg)
Letter case is the distinction between the
letters
Letter, letters, or literature may refer to:
Characters typeface
* Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet.
* Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alphabe ...
that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain
language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
s. The
writing system
A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a reliable form ...
s that distinguish between the upper and lowercase have two parallel sets of letters, with each letter in one set usually having an equivalent in the other set. The two case variants are alternative representations of the same letter: they have the same name and
pronunciation
Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or language in a specific dialect ("correct pronunciation") or simply the way a particular ...
and are treated identically when sorting in
alphabetical order
Alphabetical order is a system whereby character strings are placed in order based on the position of the characters in the conventional ordering of an alphabet. It is one of the methods of collation. In mathematics, a lexicographical order is t ...
.
Letter case is generally applied in a mixed-case fashion, with both upper and lowercase letters appearing in a given piece of text for legibility. The choice of case is often prescribed by the
grammar
In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...
of a language or by the conventions of a particular discipline. In
orthography
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...
, the uppercase is primarily reserved for special purposes, such as the first letter of a
sentence or of a
proper noun
A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (''Africa'', ''Jupiter'', ''Sarah'', ''Microsoft)'' as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (''continent, ...
(called capitalisation, or capitalised words), which makes the lowercase the more common variant in regular text.
In some contexts (e.g. academical), it is conventional to use one case only. For example,
engineering design drawings are typically labelled entirely in uppercase letters, which are easier to distinguish individually than the lowercase when space restrictions require that the lettering be very small. In
mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
, on the other hand, letter case may indicate the relationship between
mathematical object
A mathematical object is an abstract concept arising in mathematics.
In the usual language of mathematics, an ''object'' is anything that has been (or could be) formally defined, and with which one may do deductive reasoning and mathematical pr ...
s, with uppercase letters often representing “superior” objects (e.g., ''X'' could be a
mathematical set
A set is the mathematical model for a collection of different things; a set contains '' elements'' or ''members'', which can be mathematical objects of any kind: numbers, symbols, points in space, lines, other geometrical shapes, variables, or ...
containing the generic member ''x'').
Terminology
The terms ''upper case'' and ''lower case'' may be written as two consecutive words, connected with a hyphen (''upper-case'' and ''lower-case''particularly if they
pre-modify another noun
), or as a single word (''uppercase'' and ''lowercase''). These terms originated from the common layouts of the shallow
drawers
A drawer is a box-shaped container inside a piece of furniture that can be pulled out horizontally to access its contents. Drawers are built into numerous types of furniture, including cabinets, chests of drawers (bureaus), desks, and the l ...
called ''
type case
A type case is a compartmentalized wooden box used to store movable type used in letterpress printing
Letterpress printing is a technique of relief printing. Using a printing press, the process allows many copies to be produced by repeated ...
s'' used to hold the
movable type
Movable type (US English; moveable type in British English) is the system and technology of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual alphanumeric characters or punctuatio ...
for
letterpress printing
Letterpress printing is a technique of relief printing. Using a printing press, the process allows many copies to be produced by repeated direct impression of an inked, raised surface against sheets or a continuous roll of paper. A worker comp ...
. Traditionally, the capital letters were stored in a separate shallow tray or "case" that was located above the case that held the small letters.
''Majuscule'' (, less commonly ), for
palaeographers, is technically any script whose letters have very few or very short ascenders and descenders, or none at all (for example, the majuscule scripts used in the
Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209
The Codex Vaticanus ( The Vatican, Bibl. Vat., Vat. gr. 1209), designated by siglum B or 03 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering), δ 1 ( von Soden), is a fourth-century Christian manuscript of a Greek Bible, containing the majority of the Greek Old ...
, or the
Book of Kells
The Book of Kells ( la, Codex Cenannensis; ga, Leabhar Cheanannais; Dublin, Trinity College Library, MS A. I. 8 sometimes known as the Book of Columba) is an illuminated manuscript Gospel book in Latin, containing the four Gospels of the New ...
). By virtue of their visual impact, this made the term majuscule an apt descriptor for what much later came to be more commonly referred to as uppercase letters.
''Minuscule'' refers to lower-case letters. The word is often spelled ''miniscule'', by association with the unrelated word ''miniature'' and the prefix ''mini-''. This has traditionally been regarded as a spelling mistake (since ''minuscule'' is derived from the word ''minus''
), but is now so common that some
dictionaries
A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies, p ...
tend to accept it as a nonstandard or variant spelling.
''Miniscule'' is still less likely, however, to be used in reference to lower-case letters.
Typographical considerations
The
glyph
A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
s of lowercase letters can resemble smaller forms of the uppercase glyphs restricted to the base band (e.g. "C/c" and "S/s", cf.
small caps
In typography, small caps (short for "small capitals") are characters typeset with glyphs that resemble uppercase letters (capitals) but reduced in height and weight close to the surrounding lowercase letters or text figures. This is technicall ...
) or can look hardly related (e.g. "D/d" and "G/g"). Here is a comparison of the upper and lower case variants of each letter included in the
English alphabet
The alphabet for Modern English is a Latin-script alphabet consisting of 26 letters, each having an upper- and lower-case form. The word ''alphabet'' is a compound of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, '' alpha'' and '' beta''. ...
(the exact representation will vary according to the
typeface
A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font.
There are list of type ...
and
font
In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design.
In mod ...
used):
(Some lowercase letters have variations e.g. a/ɑ)
Typographically, the basic difference between the majuscules and minuscules is not that the majuscules are big and minuscules small, but that the majuscules generally have the same height (although, depending on the typeface, there may be some exceptions, particularly with ''Q'' and sometimes ''J'' having a descending element; also, various
diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
s can add to the normal height of a letter).
![Typography Line Terms](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Typography_Line_Terms.svg)
There is more variation in the height of the minuscules, as some of them have parts higher (
ascenders) or lower (
descender
In typography and handwriting, a descender is the portion of a letter that extends below the baseline of a font.
For example, in the letter ''y'', the descender is the "tail", or that portion of the diagonal line which lies below the ''v'' c ...
s) than the typical size. Normally, ''b, d, f, h, k, l, t '' are the letters with ascenders, and ''g, j, p, q, y'' are the ones with descenders. In addition, with
old-style numerals still used by some traditional or classical fonts, ''6'' and ''8'' make up the ascender set, and ''3, 4, 5, 7'' and ''9'' the descender set.
Bicameral script
![Adyge alphabet 1927 (1)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Adyge_alphabet_1927_%281%29.JPG)
A minority of writing systems use two separate cases. Such writing systems are called ''bicameral scripts''. Languages that use the
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
,
Cyrillic
, bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця
, fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs
, fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic
, fam3 = Phoenician
, fam4 = G ...
,
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
,
Coptic
Coptic may refer to:
Afro-Asia
* Copts, an ethnoreligious group mainly in the area of modern Egypt but also in Sudan and Libya
* Coptic language, a Northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century
* Coptic alphabet ...
,
Armenian
Armenian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent
** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...
,
Adlam,
Warang Citi
Warang Citi (also written Varang Kshiti or Barang Kshiti; , IPA: /wɐrɐŋ ʧɪt̪ɪ/) is a writing system invented by Lako Bodra for the Ho language spoken in East India. It is used in primary and adult education and in various publications.
It ...
,
Cherokee
The Cherokee (; chr, ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯᎢ, translit=Aniyvwiyaʔi or Anigiduwagi, or chr, ᏣᎳᎩ, links=no, translit=Tsalagi) are one of the indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, t ...
,
Garay,
Zaghawa Zaghawa may refer to:
* Zaghawa people
* Zaghawa language
Zaghawa is a Saharan language spoken by the Zaghawa people of east-central Chad (in the Sahel) and northwestern Sudan (Darfur). The people who speak this language call it Beria, from ''Be ...
, and
Osage The Osage Nation, a Native American tribe in the United States, is the source of most other terms containing the word "osage".
Osage can also refer to:
* Osage language, a Dhaegin language traditionally spoken by the Osage Nation
* Osage (Unicode b ...
scripts use letter cases in their written form as an aid to clarity. Another bicameral script, which is not used for any modern languages, is
Deseret. The
Georgian alphabet
The Georgian scripts are the three writing systems used to write the Georgian language: Asomtavruli, Nuskhuri and Mkhedruli. Although the systems differ in appearance, their letters share the same names and alphabetical order and are written hor ...
has several variants, and there were attempts to use them as different cases, but the modern written
Georgian language
Georgian (, , ) is the most widely-spoken Kartvelian language, and serves as the literary language or lingua franca for speakers of related languages. It is the official language of Georgia and the native or primary language of 87.6% of its p ...
does not distinguish case.
All other writing systems make no distinction between majuscules and minuscules a system called unicameral script or
unicase
A unicase or unicameral alphabet has just one case for its letters. Arabic, Brahmic scripts like Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Old Hungarian (Hungarian Runic), Hebrew, Iberian, Georgian, and Hangul are unicase writing systems, while (modern ...
. This includes most
syllabic
Syllabic may refer to:
*Syllable, a unit of speech sound, considered the building block of words
**Syllabic consonant, a consonant that forms the nucleus of a syllable
*Syllabary, writing system using symbols for syllables
*Abugida, writing system ...
and other non-alphabetic scripts.
In scripts with a case distinction, lower case is generally used for the majority of text; capitals are used for capitalisation and
emphasis when bold is not available.
Acronym
An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
s (and particularly initialisms) are often written in
all-caps
In typography, all caps (short for "all capitals") refers to text or a font in which all letters are capital letters, for example: "THIS TEXT IS IN ALL CAPS". All caps may be used for emphasis (for a word or phrase). They are commonly seen in l ...
, depending on
various factors.
Capitalisation
Capitalisation is the
writing
Writing is a medium of human communication which involves the representation of a language through a system of physically Epigraphy, inscribed, Printing press, mechanically transferred, or Word processor, digitally represented Symbols (semiot ...
of a
word
A word is a basic element of language that carries an semantics, objective or pragmatics, practical semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of w ...
with its first
letter
Letter, letters, or literature may refer to:
Characters typeface
* Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet.
* Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alphabe ...
in uppercase and the remaining letters in lowercase. Capitalisation rules vary by
language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
and are often quite complex, but in most modern languages that have capitalisation, the first word of every
sentence is capitalised, as are all
proper noun
A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (''Africa'', ''Jupiter'', ''Sarah'', ''Microsoft)'' as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (''continent, ...
s.
Capitalisation in English, in terms of the general orthographic rules independent of context (e.g. title vs. heading vs. text), is universally standardised for
formal
Formal, formality, informal or informality imply the complying with, or not complying with, some set of requirements (forms, in Ancient Greek). They may refer to:
Dress code and events
* Formal wear, attire for formal events
* Semi-formal attire ...
writing. Capital letters are used as the first letter of a sentence, a proper noun, or a
proper adjective English orthography sometimes uses the term proper adjective to mean adjectives that take initial capital letters, and common adjective to mean those that do not. For example, a person from India is Indian—''Indian'' is a proper adjective.
Etymol ...
. The
names of the days of the week
In many languages, the names given to the seven days of the week are derived from the names of the classical planets in Hellenistic astronomy, which were in turn named after contemporary deities, a system introduced by the Sumerians and late ...
and the names of the months are also capitalised, as are the first-person
pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase.
Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not co ...
"I"
and the
vocative particle "
O". There are a few pairs of words of different meanings whose
only difference is capitalisation of the first letter.
Honorific
An honorific is a title that conveys esteem, courtesy, or respect for position or rank when used in addressing or referring to a person. Sometimes, the term "honorific" is used in a more specific sense to refer to an honorary academic title. It ...
s and personal
title
A title is one or more words used before or after a person's name, in certain contexts. It may signify either generation, an official position, or a professional or academic qualification. In some languages, titles may be inserted between the f ...
s showing rank or prestige are capitalised when used together with the name of the person (for example, "Mr. Smith", "Bishop O'Brien", "Professor Moore") or as a direct address, but normally not when used alone and in a more general sense. It can also be seen as customary to capitalise any word in some contexts even a pronoun referring to the
deity
A deity or god is a supernatural being who is considered divine or sacred. The ''Oxford Dictionary of English'' defines deity as a god or goddess, or anything revered as divine. C. Scott Littleton defines a deity as "a being with powers greate ...
of a
monotheistic religion
Monotheism is the belief that there is only one deity, an all-supreme being that is universally referred to as God. Cross, F.L.; Livingstone, E.A., eds. (1974). "Monotheism". The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (2 ed.). Oxford: Oxford ...
.
Other words normally start with a lower-case letter. There are, however, situations where further capitalisation may be used to give added emphasis, for example in headings and publication titles (see below). In some traditional forms of poetry, capitalisation has conventionally been used as a marker to indicate the beginning of a
line of verse independent of any grammatical feature. In political writing, parody and satire, the unexpected emphasis afforded by otherwise ill-advised capitalisation is often used to great stylistic effect, such as in the case of George Orwell's
Big Brother
Big Brother may refer to:
* Big Brother (''Nineteen Eighty-Four''), a character from George Orwell's novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''
** Authoritarian personality, any omnipresent figure representing oppressive control
** Big Brother Awards, a sat ...
.
Other languages vary in their use of capitals. For example, in
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
all nouns are capitalised (this was previously common in English as well, mainly in the 17th and 18th centuries), while in
Romance
Romance (from Vulgar Latin , "in the Roman language", i.e., "Latin") may refer to:
Common meanings
* Romance (love), emotional attraction towards another person and the courtship behaviors undertaken to express the feelings
* Romance languages, ...
and most other European languages the names of the days of the week, the names of the months, and adjectives of nationality, religion, and so on normally begin with a lower-case letter. On the other hand, in some languages it is customary to capitalise
formal polite pronouns, for example ''De'', ''Dem'' (
Danish
Danish may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark
People
* A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark
* Culture of Denmark
* Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish ance ...
), ''Sie'', ''Ihnen'' (German), and ''Vd'' or ''Ud'' (short for ''usted'' in
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
).
Informal communication, such as
texting
Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending electronic messages, typically consisting of alphabetic and numeric characters, between two or more users of mobile devices, desktops/laptops, or another type of compatible compute ...
,
instant messaging
Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and trigge ...
or a handwritten
sticky note
A Post-it Note (or sticky note) is a small piece of paper with a re-adherable strip of glue on its back, made for temporarily attaching notes to documents and other surfaces. A low-tack pressure-sensitive adhesive allows the notes to be easil ...
, may not bother to follow the conventions concerning capitalisation, but that is because its users usually do not expect it to be formal.
Exceptional letters and digraphs
* The German letter "
ß" formerly existed only in lower case. The orthographical capitalisation does not concern "ß", which generally does not occur at the beginning of a word, and in the all-caps style it has traditionally been replaced by the
digraph "SS". Since June 2017, however,
capital ẞ
Capital may refer to:
Common uses
* Capital city, a municipality of primary status
** List of national capital cities
* Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences
* Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used fo ...
is accepted as an alternative in the all-caps style.
* The Greek upper-case letter "
Σ" has two different lower-case forms: "ς" in word-final position and "σ" elsewhere. In a similar manner, the Latin upper-case letter "
S" used to have two different lower-case forms: "s" in word-final position and "
ſ " elsewhere. The latter form, called the
long s
The long s , also known as the medial s or initial s, is an archaism, archaic form of the lowercase letter . It replaced the single ''s'', or one or both of the letters ''s'' in a 'double ''s sequence (e.g., "ſinfulneſs" for "sinfulness" ...
, fell out of general use before the middle of the 19th century, except for the countries that continued to use
blackletter
Blackletter (sometimes black letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for the Danish, Norweg ...
typefaces such as
Fraktur
Fraktur () is a calligraphic hand of the Latin alphabet and any of several blackletter typefaces derived from this hand. The blackletter lines are broken up; that is, their forms contain many angles when compared to the curves of the Antiqu ...
. When blackletter type fell out of general use in the mid-20th century, even those countries dropped the long s.
* The treatment of the Greek
iota subscript
The iota subscript is a diacritic mark in the Greek alphabet shaped like a small vertical stroke or miniature iota placed below the letter. It can occur with the vowel letters eta , omega , and alpha . It represents the former presence of an ...
with upper-case letters is complicated.
* Unlike most languages that use Latin-script and link the dotless upper-case "
I" with the dotted lower-case "i",
Turkish
Turkish may refer to:
*a Turkic language spoken by the Turks
* of or about Turkey
** Turkish language
*** Turkish alphabet
** Turkish people, a Turkic ethnic group and nation
*** Turkish citizen, a citizen of Turkey
*** Turkish communities and mi ...
as well as
some forms of Azeri have both a
dotted and
dotless I
I, or ı, called dotless I, is a letter used in the Latin-script alphabets of Azerbaijani, Crimean Tatar, Gagauz, Kazakh, Tatar, Kyrgyz, and Turkish. It commonly represents the close back unrounded vowel , except in Kazakh where it represent ...
, each in both upper and lower case. Each of the two pairs ("
İ/i" and "
I/ı") represents a distinctive
phoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
.
* In some languages, specific digraphs may be regarded as single letters, and in
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
, the digraph "
IJ/ij" is even capitalised with both components written in uppercase (for example, "IJsland" rather than "Ijsland").
In other languages, such as
Welsh
Welsh may refer to:
Related to Wales
* Welsh, referring or related to Wales
* Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales
* Welsh people
People
* Welsh (surname)
* Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...
and
Hungarian, various digraphs are regarded as single letters for collation purposes, but the second component of the digraph will still be written in lower case even if the first component is capitalised. Similarly, in
South Slavic languages
The South Slavic languages are one of three branches of the Slavic languages. There are approximately 30 million speakers, mainly in the Balkans. These are separated geographically from speakers of the other two Slavic branches (West and East) ...
whose orthography is coordinated between the Cyrillic and Latin scripts, the Latin digraphs "
Lj/lj", "
Nj/nj" and "
Dž/dž" are each regarded as a single letter (like their Cyrillic equivalents "
Љ/љ", "
Њ/њ" and "
Џ/џ", respectively), but only in all-caps style should both components be in upper case (e.g. Ljiljan–LJILJAN, Njonja–NJONJA, Džidža–DŽIDŽA).
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
designates a
single character for each case variant (i.e., upper case, title case and lower case) of the three digraphs.
* Some English surnames such as fforbes are traditionally spelt with a digraph instead of a capital letter (at least for ff). This indicates a long and prestigious family tradition.
* In the
Hawaiian orthography, the
okina Okina may refer to:
* ʻOkina, a letter used in some Polynesian languages, visually resembling a left single quotation mark
* Okina () or , a character from the ''Rurouni Kenshin'' manga series
* Okina, Spain, a village in the Basque Country
* , ...
is a
phonemic
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
symbol that visually resembles a left single
quotation mark
Quotation marks (also known as quotes, quote marks, speech marks, inverted commas, or talking marks) are punctuation marks used in pairs in various writing systems to set off direct speech, a quotation, or a phrase. The pair consists of an ...
. Representing the
glottal stop
The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...
, the okina can be characterised as either a letter or a
diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
. As a unicase letter, the okina is unaffected by capitalisation; it is the following letter that is capitalised instead. According to the
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
standard, the okina is formally encoded as , but it is not uncommon to substitute this with a similar
punctuation
Punctuation (or sometimes interpunction) is the use of spacing, conventional signs (called punctuation marks), and certain typographical devices as aids to the understanding and correct reading of written text, whether read silently or aloud. An ...
character, such as the left single quotation mark or an
apostrophe
The apostrophe ( or ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes:
* The marking of the omission of one o ...
.
Related phenomena
Similar orthographic and graphostylistic conventions are used for emphasis or following language-specific or other rules, including:
*
Font
In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design.
In mod ...
effects such as
italic type
In typography, italic type is a cursive font based on a stylised form of calligraphic handwriting. Owing to the influence from calligraphy, italics normally slant slightly to the right. Italics are a way to emphasise key points in a printed tex ...
or
oblique type
Oblique type is a form of type that slants slightly to the right, used for the same purposes as italic type. Unlike italic type, however, it does not use different glyph shapes; it uses the same glyphs as roman type, except slanted. Oblique and it ...
,
boldface
In typography, emphasis is the strengthening of words in a text with a font in a different style from the rest of the text, to highlight them. It is the equivalent of prosody stress in speech.
Methods and use
The most common methods in W ...
, and choice of
serif
In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ...
vs.
sans-serif
In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than seri ...
.
*
Typographical conventions in mathematical formulae
Typographical conventions in mathematical formulae provide uniformity across mathematical texts and help the readers of those texts to grasp new concepts quickly.
Mathematical notation includes letters from various alphabets, as well as special ma ...
include the
use of Greek letters and the
use of Latin letters with special formatting such as
blackboard bold
Blackboard bold is a typeface style that is often used for certain symbols in mathematical texts, in which certain lines of the symbol (usually vertical or near-vertical lines) are doubled. The symbols usually denote number sets. One way of pro ...
and
blackletter
Blackletter (sometimes black letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for the Danish, Norweg ...
.
* Some letters of the
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
and
Hebrew alphabet
The Hebrew alphabet ( he, wikt:אלפבית, אָלֶף־בֵּית עִבְרִי, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is an abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew languag ...
s and some
jamo of the Korean
hangul
The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul, . Hangul may also be written as following South Korea's standard Romanization. ( ) in South Korea and Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea, is the modern official writing system for the Korean language. The let ...
have different forms depending on placement within a word, but these rules are strict and the different forms cannot be used for emphasis.
**In the Arabic and Arabic-based alphabets, letters in a word are connected, except for several that cannot connect to the following letter. Letters may have distinct forms depending on whether they are initial (connected only to the following letter), medial (connected to both neighboring letters), final (connected only to the preceding letter), or isolated (connected to neither a preceding nor a following letter).
**In the Hebrew alphabet, five letters have a distinct form (see
Final form) that is used when they are word-final.
* In
Georgian
Georgian may refer to:
Common meanings
* Anything related to, or originating from Georgia (country)
** Georgians, an indigenous Caucasian ethnic group
** Georgian language, a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians
**Georgian scripts, three scrip ...
, some authors use isolated letters from the ancient
Asomtavruli
The Georgian scripts are the three writing systems used to write the Georgian language: #Asomtavruli, Asomtavruli, #Nuskhuri, Nuskhuri and #Mkhedruli, Mkhedruli. Although the systems differ in appearance, their Letter (alphabet), letters share t ...
alphabet within a text otherwise written in the modern
Mkhedruli
The Georgian scripts are the three writing systems used to write the Georgian language: Asomtavruli, Nuskhuri and Mkhedruli. Although the systems differ in appearance, their letters share the same names and alphabetical order and are written hor ...
in a fashion that is reminiscent of the usage of upper-case letters in the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic alphabets.
* In the
Japanese writing system
The modern Japanese writing system uses a combination of logographic kanji, which are adopted Chinese characters, and syllabic kana. Kana itself consists of a pair of syllabaries: hiragana, used primarily for native or naturalised Japanese wo ...
, an author has the option of switching between
kanji
are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...
,
hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''.
It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contrast ...
,
katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...
, and
rōmaji
The romanization of Japanese is the use of Latin script to write the Japanese language. This method of writing is sometimes referred to in Japanese as .
Japanese is normally written in a combination of logographic characters borrowed from Ch ...
. In particular, every hiragana character has an equivalent katakana character, and vice versa. Romanised Japanese sometimes uses lowercase letters to represent words that would be written in hiragana, and uppercase letters to represent words that would be written in katakana. Some kana characters are written in smaller type when they modify or combine with the preceding sign (''
yōon
The , also written as ''yōon'', is a feature of the Japanese language in which a mora is formed with an added sound, i.e., palatalized, or (more rarely in the modern language) with an added sound, i.e. labialized.
''Yōon'' are represented in ...
'') or the following sign (''
sokuon
The is a Japanese symbol in the form of a small hiragana or katakana '' tsu''. In less formal language it is called or , meaning "small ''tsu''". It serves multiple purposes in Japanese writing.
Appearance
In both hiragana and katakana, t ...
'').
Stylistic or specialised usage
![Headline](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Headline.png)
In English, a variety of case styles are used in various circumstances:
; Sentence case
: "
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" is an English-language pangram — a sentence that contains all the letters of the alphabet. The phrase is commonly used for touch-typing practice, testing typewriters and computer keyboards, displ ...
"
A mixed-case style in which the first word of the sentence is capitalised, as well as proper nouns and other words as required by a more specific rule. This is generally equivalent to the baseline universal standard of formal English orthography.
: In
computer programming
Computer programming is the process of performing a particular computation (or more generally, accomplishing a specific computing result), usually by designing and building an executable computer program. Programming involves tasks such as ana ...
, the initial capital is easier to automate than the other rules. For example, on English-language
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...
, the first character in
page titles is capitalised by default. Because the other rules are more complex,
substring
In formal language theory and computer science, a substring is a contiguous sequence of characters within a string. For instance, "''the best of''" is a substring of "''It was the best of times''". In contrast, "''Itwastimes''" is a subsequence ...
s for
concatenation
In formal language, formal language theory and computer programming, string concatenation is the operation of joining character string (computer science), character strings wikt:end-to-end, end-to-end. For example, the concatenation of "sno ...
into sentences are commonly written in "mid-sentence case", applying all the rules of sentence case except the initial capital.
;
Title case
Title case or headline case is a style of capitalization used for rendering the titles of published works or works of art in English. When using title case, all words are capitalized, except for minor words (typically articles, short prepositions ...
(capital case, headline style)
: "The Quick Brown Fox Jumps over the Lazy Dog"
A mixed-case style with all words capitalised, except for certain subsets (particularly
articles
Article often refers to:
* Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness
* Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication
Article may also refer to:
G ...
and short
preposition
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
s and
conjunctions) defined by rules that are not universally standardised. The standardisation is only at the level of house styles and individual
style manual
A style guide or manual of style is a set of standards for the writing, formatting, and design of documents. It is often called a style sheet, although that term also has multiple other meanings. The standards can be applied either for gene ...
s.
; Start case (First letter of each word capitalized)
: "The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog"
''Start case'' or ''initial caps'' is a simplified variant of title case. In
text processing
In computing, the term text processing refers to the theory and practice of automating the creation or manipulation of electronic text.
''Text'' usually refers to all the alphanumeric characters specified on the keyboard of the person engaging t ...
, title case usually involves the capitalisation of all words irrespective of their
part of speech
In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are assi ...
.
;
All caps
In typography, all caps (short for "all capitals") refers to text or a font in which all letters are capital letters, for example: "THIS TEXT IS IN ALL CAPS". All caps may be used for emphasis (for a word or phrase). They are commonly seen in ...
(all uppercase)
: "THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG"
A unicase style with capital letters only. This can be used in headings and special situations, such as for typographical emphasis in text made on a typewriter. With the advent of the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
, the all-caps style is more often used for emphasis; however, it is considered poor
netiquette
Etiquette in technology, colloquially referred to as netiquette is a term used to refer to the unofficial code of policies that encourage good behavior on the Internet which is used to regulate respect and polite behavior on social media platforms ...
by some to type in all capitals, and said to be tantamount to shouting.
[RFC 1855 "Netiquette Guidelines"] Long spans of Latin-alphabet text in all upper-case are more difficult to read because of the absence of the
ascenders and
descender
In typography and handwriting, a descender is the portion of a letter that extends below the baseline of a font.
For example, in the letter ''y'', the descender is the "tail", or that portion of the diagonal line which lies below the ''v'' c ...
s found in lower-case letters, which aids recognition and legibility. In some cultures it is common to write family names in all caps to distinguish them from the given names, especially in identity documents such as passports.
;
Small caps
In typography, small caps (short for "small capitals") are characters typeset with glyphs that resemble uppercase letters (capitals) but reduced in height and weight close to the surrounding lowercase letters or text figures. This is technicall ...
: ""
Similar in form to capital letters but roughly the size of a lower-case "x", small caps can be used instead of lower-case letters and combined with regular caps in a mixed-case fashion. This is a feature of certain fonts, such as
Copperplate Gothic
Copperplate Gothic is a typeface designed by Frederic W. Goudy and released by American Type Founders (ATF) in 1901.
While termed a "''Gothic''" (another term for sans-serif), the face has small glyphic serifs that act to emphasize the blunt ...
. According to various typographical traditions, the height of small caps can be equal to or slightly larger than the
x-height
upright 2.0, alt=A diagram showing the line terms used in typography
In typography, the x-height, or corpus size, is the distance between the baseline and the mean line of lowercase letters in a typeface. Typically, this is the height of the let ...
of the typeface (the smaller variant is sometimes called ''petite caps'' and may also be mixed with the larger variant). Small caps can be used for acronyms, names, mathematical entities, computer commands in printed text, business or personal printed stationery letterheads, and other situations where a given phrase needs to be distinguished from the main text.
; All lowercase
:"the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
![SteveJobsSignatureInsideOriginalMacintoshCase-Villenero](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/SteveJobsSignatureInsideOriginalMacintoshCase-Villenero.jpg)
:A unicase style with no capital letters. This is sometimes used for artistic effect, such as in poetry. Also commonly seen in computer languages, and in informal electronic communications such as
SMS language
Short Message Service (SMS) language, textism, or textese is the abbreviated language and slang commonly used in the late 1990s and early 2000s with mobile phone text messaging, and occasionally through Internet-based communication such as ema ...
and
instant messaging
Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and trigge ...
(avoiding the
shift key
The Shift key is a modifier key on a keyboard, used to type capital letters and other alternate "upper" characters. There are typically two shift keys, on the left and right sides of the row below the home row. The Shift key's name originated f ...
, to type more quickly). Apple co-founder
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; a ...
used all-lowercase (in
cursive
Cursive (also known as script, among other names) is any style of penmanship in which characters are written joined in a flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing faster, in contrast to block letters. It varies in functionalit ...
) in his signature.
Headings and publication titles
In English-language publications, various conventions are used for the capitalisation of words in
publication titles and
headline
The headline or heading is the text indicating the content or nature of the article below it, typically by providing a form of brief summary of its contents.
The large type ''front page headline'' did not come into use until the late 19th centur ...
s, including chapter and section headings. The rules differ substantially between individual house styles.
The convention followed by many British
publisher
Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...
s (including scientific publishers like ''
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...
'' and ''
New Scientist
''New Scientist'' is a magazine covering all aspects of science and technology. Based in London, it publishes weekly English-language editions in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. An editorially separate organisation publishe ...
'', magazines like ''
The Economist
''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Econo ...
'', and newspapers like ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' and ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...
'') and many U.S. newspapers is sentence-style capitalisation in headlines, i.e. capitalisation follows the same rules that apply for sentences. This convention is usually called ''sentence case''. It may also be applied to publication titles, especially in bibliographic references and library catalogues. An example of a global publisher whose English-language house style prescribes sentence-case titles and headings is the
International Organization for Standardization
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ) is an international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Membership requirements are given in Ar ...
(ISO).
For publication titles it is, however, a common typographic practice among both British
and U.S. publishers to capitalise significant words (and in the United States, this is often applied to headings, too). This family of typographic conventions is usually called ''
title case
Title case or headline case is a style of capitalization used for rendering the titles of published works or works of art in English. When using title case, all words are capitalized, except for minor words (typically articles, short prepositions ...
''. For example, R. M. Ritter's ''Oxford Manual of Style'' (2002) suggests capitalising "the first word and all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs, but generally not articles, conjunctions and short prepositions".
This is an old form of
emphasis, similar to the more modern practice of using a larger or boldface font for titles. The rules which prescribe which words to capitalise are not based on any grammatically inherent correct–incorrect distinction and are not universally standardised; they differ between style guides, although most style guides tend to follow a few strong conventions, as follows:
* Most styles capitalise all words except for short
closed-class words (certain
parts of speech
In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are assi ...
, namely, articles, prepositions, and conjunctions); but the first word (always) and last word (in many styles) are also capitalised, regardless of their part of speech. Many styles capitalise longer prepositions such as "between" and "throughout", but not shorter ones such as "for" and "with".
Typically, a preposition is considered short if it has up to three or four letters.
* A few styles capitalise all words in title case (the so-called ''start case''), which has the advantage of being easy to implement and hard to get "wrong" (that is, "not edited to style"). Because of this rule's simplicity, software
case-folding routines can handle 95% or more of the editing, especially if they are programmed for desired exceptions (such as "FBI" rather than "Fbi").
* As for whether hyphenated words are capitalised not only at the beginning but also after the hyphen, there is no universal standard; variation occurs
in the wild
''In The Wild'' is a popular nature television series produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation from 1976 until 1981. It was hosted by Harry Butler, a noted Australian natural science, naturalist and environmental consultant.
The re-ru ...
and among house styles (e.g., "The Letter-''C''ase Rule in My Book"; "Short-''t''erm Follow-''u''p Care for Burns"). Traditional copyediting makes a distinction between ''temporary compounds'' (such as many
nonce ovel instance
Bereavement in Judaism () is a combination of '' minhag'' and '' mitzvah'' derived from the Torah and Judaism's classical rabbinic texts. The details of observance and practice vary according to each Jewish community.
Mourners
In Judaism, the ...
compound modifier
A compound modifier (also called a compound adjective, phrasal adjective, or adjectival phrase) is a compound of two or more attributive words: that is, two or more words that collectively modify a noun. Compound modifiers are grammatically equival ...
s), in which every part of the hyphenated word is capitalised (e.g. "How This Particular Author Chose to Style His ''A''utumn-''A''pple-''P''icking Heading"), and ''permanent compounds'', which are terms that, although compound and hyphenated, are so well established that dictionaries enter them as
headword
In morphology and lexicography, a lemma (plural ''lemmas'' or ''lemmata'') is the canonical form, dictionary form, or citation form of a set of word forms. In English, for example, ''break'', ''breaks'', ''broke'', ''broken'' and ''breaking'' a ...
s (e.g., "Short-''t''erm Follow-''u''p Care for Burns").
Title case is widely used in many English-language publications, especially in the United States. However, its conventions are sometimes not followed strictly especially in informal writing.
In creative typography, such as music record covers and other artistic material, all styles are commonly encountered, including all-lowercase letters and special case styles, such as
studly caps
Alternating caps, also known as studly caps or sticky caps (where "caps" is short for capital letters), is a form of text notation in which the capitalization of letters varies by some pattern, or arbitrarily (often also omitting spaces between w ...
(see below). For example, in the
wordmark
__notoc__
A wordmark, word mark, or logotype, is usually a distinct text-only typographic treatment of the name of a company, institution, or product name used for purposes of identification and branding. Examples can be found in the graphic iden ...
s of video games it is not uncommon to use stylised upper-case letters at the beginning and end of a title, with the intermediate letters in small caps or lower case (e.g.,
,
, and
DmC).
Multi-word proper nouns
Single-word
proper nouns
A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (''Africa'', ''Jupiter'', ''Sarah (given name), Sarah'', ''Microsoft)'' as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a Class (philo ...
are capitalised in formal written English, unless the name is intentionally stylised to break this rule (such as the first or last name of
danah boyd
danah boyd (stylized in lowercase, born November 24, 1977 as Danah Michele Mattas) She noted her mother added lowercase 'h' in birth name "danah" for typographical balance, reflecting the lowercase first letter 'd' and later changed her last na ...
).
Multi-word proper nouns include names of organisations, publications, and people. Often the rules for "title case" (described in the previous section) are applied to these names, so that non-initial articles, conjunctions, and short prepositions are lowercase, and all other words are uppercase. For example, the short preposition "of" and the article "the" are lowercase in "Steering Committee of the Finance Department". Usually only capitalised words are used to form an
acronym
An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
variant of the name, though there is some variation in this.
With
personal names
A personal name, or full name, in onomastic terminology also known as prosoponym (from Ancient Greek πρόσωπον / ''prósōpon'' - person, and ὄνομα / ''onoma'' - name), is the set of names by which an individual person is known, ...
, this practice can vary (sometimes all words are capitalised, regardless of length or function), but is not limited to English names. Examples include the English names
Tamar of Georgia
Tamar the Great ( ka, თამარ მეფე, tr, lit. "King Tamar") ( 1160 – 18 January 1213) reigned as the Queen of Georgia from 1184 to 1213, presiding over the apex of the Georgian Golden Age. A member of the Bagrationi dynasty ...
and
Catherine the Great
, en, Catherine Alexeievna Romanova, link=yes
, house =
, father = Christian August, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst
, mother = Joanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp
, birth_date =
, birth_name = Princess Sophie of Anhal ...
, "
van
A van is a type of road vehicle used for transporting goods or people. Depending on the type of van, it can be bigger or smaller than a pickup truck and SUV, and bigger than a common car. There is some varying in the scope of the word across th ...
" and "der" in
Dutch name
Dutch names consist of one or more given names and a surname. The given name is usually gender-specific.
Dutch given names
A Dutch child's birth and given name(s) must be officially registered by the parents within 3 days after birth. It is not ...
s, "
von
The term ''von'' () is used in German language surnames either as a nobiliary particle indicating a noble patrilineality, or as a simple preposition used by commoners that means ''of'' or ''from''.
Nobility directories like the ''Almanach de Go ...
" and "zu" in
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
, "de", "los", and "y" in
Spanish names
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
, "de" or "d'" in
French name
French names typically consist of one or multiple given names, and a surname. Usually one given name and the surname are used in a person’s daily life, with the other given names used mainly in official documents. Middle names, in the English s ...
s, and "ibn" in
Arabic name
Arabic language names have historically been based on a long naming system. Many people from the Arabic-speaking and also Muslim countries have not had given/ middle/family names but rather a chain of names. This system remains in use throughout ...
s.
Some surname prefixes also affect the capitalisation of the following internal letter or word, for example "Mac" in
Celtic names
Onomastics is an important source of information on the early Celts, as Greco-Roman historiography recorded Celtic names before substantial written information becomes available in any Celtic language.
Like Germanic names, early Celtic names are ...
and "Al" in Arabic names.
Unit symbols and prefixes in the metric system
![SI base units](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/SI_base_units.svg)
In the
International System of Units
The International System of Units, known by the international abbreviation SI in all languages and sometimes pleonastically as the SI system, is the modern form of the metric system and the world's most widely used system of measurement. E ...
(SI), a letter usually has different meanings in upper and lower case when used as a unit symbol. Generally, unit symbols are written in lower case, but if the name of the unit is derived from a proper noun, the first letter of the symbol is capitalised. Nevertheless, the ''name'' of the unit, if spelled out, is always considered a common noun and written accordingly in lower case.
For example:
* 1 s (one
second
The second (symbol: s) is the unit of time in the International System of Units (SI), historically defined as of a day – this factor derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes and finally to 60 seconds ...
) when used for the
base unit of
time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
.
* 1 S (one
siemens
Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational conglomerate corporation and the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe headquartered in Munich with branch offices abroad.
The principal divisions of the corporation are ''Industry'', '' ...
) when used for the unit of
electric conductance
The electrical resistance of an object is a measure of its opposition to the flow of electric current. Its reciprocal quantity is , measuring the ease with which an electric current passes. Electrical resistance shares some conceptual parallels ...
and
admittance
In electrical engineering, admittance is a measure of how easily a circuit or device will allow a current to flow. It is defined as the reciprocal of impedance, analogous to how conductance & resistance are defined. The SI unit of admittance ...
(named after
Werner von Siemens
Ernst Werner Siemens (von Siemens from 1888; ; ; 13 December 1816 – 6 December 1892) was a German electrical engineer, inventor and industrialist. Siemens's name has been adopted as the SI unit of electrical conductance, the siemens. He foun ...
).
* 1 Sv (one
sievert
The sievert (symbol: SvNot be confused with the sverdrup or the svedberg, two non-SI units that sometimes use the same symbol.) is a unit in the International System of Units (SI) intended to represent the stochastic health risk of ionizing radi ...
), used for the unit of
ionising radiation
Ionizing radiation (or ionising radiation), including nuclear radiation, consists of subatomic particles or electromagnetic waves that have sufficient energy to ionize atoms or molecules by detaching electrons from them. Some particles can travel ...
dose (named after
Rolf Maximilian Sievert
Rolf Maximilian Sievert (; 6 May 1896 – 3 October 1966) was a Swedish medical physicist whose major contribution was in the study of the biological effects of ionizing radiation.
Sievert was born in Stockholm, Sweden. His parents were Ma ...
).
For the purpose of clarity, the symbol for
litre
The litre (international spelling) or liter (American English spelling) (SI symbols L and l, other symbol used: ℓ) is a metric unit of volume. It is equal to 1 cubic decimetre (dm3), 1000 cubic centimetres (cm3) or 0.001 cubic metre (m3). ...
can optionally be written in upper case even though the name is not derived from a proper noun.
For example, "one litre" may be written as:
* 1 l, the original form, for typefaces in which "digit one" , "lower-case ell" , and "upper-case i" look different.
* 1 L, an alternative form, for typefaces in which these characters are difficult to distinguish, or the typeface the reader will be using is unknown. A "
script l" in various typefaces (e.g.: 1
l) has traditionally been used in some countries to prevent confusion; however, the separate
Unicode character
The Unicode Consortium and the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/ WG 2 jointly collaborate on the list of the characters in the Universal Coded Character Set. The Universal Coded Character Set, most commonly called the Universal Character Set ( UCS, officia ...
which represents this, , is deprecated by the
SI. Another solution sometimes seen in
Web typography
Web typography is the use of fonts on the World Wide Web. When HTML was first created, font faces and styles were controlled exclusively by the settings of each web browser. There was no mechanism for individual Web pages to control font display u ...
is to use a serif font for "lower-case ell" in otherwise sans-serif material (1
l).
The letter case of a prefix symbol is determined independently of the unit symbol to which it is attached. Lower case is used for all submultiple prefix symbols and the small multiple prefix symbols up to "k" (for
kilo
KILO (94.3 FM, 94.3 KILO) is a radio station broadcasting in Colorado Springs and Pueblo, Colorado. It also streams online.
History
KLST and KPIK-FM
The 94.3 signal signed on the air on August 22, 1962, as KLST, owned by Little London Broa ...
, meaning 10
3 = 1000 multiplier), whereas upper case is used for larger multipliers:
* 1 ms, millisecond, a small measure of time ("m" for
milli
''Milli'' (symbol m) is a unit prefix in the metric system denoting a factor of one thousandth (10−3). Proposed in 1793, and adopted in 1795, the prefix comes from the Latin , meaning ''one thousand'' (the Latin plural is ). Since 1960, the pre ...
, meaning 10
−3 = 1/1000 multiplier).
* 1 Ms, megasecond, a large measure of time ("M" for
mega
Mega or MEGA may refer to:
Science
* mega-, a metric prefix denoting 106
* Mega (number), a certain very large integer in Steinhaus–Moser notation
* "mega-" a prefix meaning "large" that is used in taxonomy
* Gravity assist, for ''Moon-Eart ...
, meaning 10
6 = 1 000 000 multiplier).
* 1 mS,
millisiemens
The siemens (symbol: S) is the unit of electric conductance, electric susceptance, and electric admittance in the International System of Units (SI). Conductance, susceptance, and admittance are the reciprocals of resistance, reactance, and ...
, a small measure of electric conductance.
* 1 MS, megasiemens, a large measure of electric conductance.
* 1 mm, millimetre, a small measure of
length
Length is a measure of distance. In the International System of Quantities, length is a quantity with dimension distance. In most systems of measurement a base unit for length is chosen, from which all other units are derived. In the Interna ...
.
* 1 Mm, megametre, a large measure of length.
Use within programming languages
Some case styles are not used in standard English, but are common in
computer programming
Computer programming is the process of performing a particular computation (or more generally, accomplishing a specific computing result), usually by designing and building an executable computer program. Programming involves tasks such as ana ...
, product
brand
A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create an ...
ing, or other specialised fields.
The usage derives from how programming languages are
parsed
Parsing, syntax analysis, or syntactic analysis is the process of analyzing a string of symbols, either in natural language, computer languages or data structures, conforming to the rules of a formal grammar. The term ''parsing'' comes from Lati ...
, programmatically. They generally separate their syntactic tokens by simple
whitespace
White space or whitespace may refer to:
Technology
* Whitespace characters, characters in computing that represent horizontal or vertical space
* White spaces (radio), allocated but locally unused radio frequencies
* TV White Space Database, a mec ...
, including
space character
In computer programming, whitespace is any character or series of characters that represent horizontal or vertical space in typography. When rendered, a whitespace character does not correspond to a visible mark, but typically does occupy an area ...
s,
tabs, and
newline
Newline (frequently called line ending, end of line (EOL), next line (NEL) or line break) is a control character or sequence of control characters in character encoding specifications such as ASCII, EBCDIC, Unicode, etc. This character, or a ...
s. When the tokens, such as function and variable names start to multiply in complex
software development
Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, programming, documenting, testing, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications, frameworks, or other software components. Software development invol ...
, and there is still a need to keep the
source code
In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...
human-readable,
Naming conventions
A naming convention is a convention (generally agreed scheme) for naming things. Conventions differ in their intents, which may include to:
* Allow useful information to be deduced from the names based on regularities. For instance, in Manhatta ...
make this possible. So for example, a function dealing with matrix multiplication might formally be called:
** ''SGEMM(*)'', with the asterisk standing in for an equally inscrutable list of 13 parameters (in
BLAS
Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms (BLAS) is a specification that prescribes a set of low-level routines for performing common linear algebra operations such as vector addition, scalar multiplication, dot products, linear combinations, and matrix ...
),
** ''MultiplyMatrixByMatrix(Matrix x, Matrix y)'', in some hypothetical higher level
manifestly typed language, broadly following the syntax of
C++
C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...
or
Java
Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...
,
** ''multiply-matrix-by-matrix(x, y)'' in something derived from
LISP
A lisp is a speech impairment in which a person misarticulates sibilants (, , , , , , , ). These misarticulations often result in unclear speech.
Types
* A frontal lisp occurs when the tongue is placed anterior to the target. Interdental lisping ...
, or perhaps
** ''(multiply (x y))'' in the
CLOS
Clos may refer to:
People
* Clos (surname)
Other uses
* CLOS, Command line-of-sight, a method of guiding a missile to its intended target
* Clos network, a kind of multistage switching network
* Clos (vineyard), a walled vineyard; used in France, ...
, or some newer derivative language supporting
type inference
Type inference refers to the automatic detection of the type of an expression in a formal language. These include programming languages and mathematical type systems, but also natural languages in some branches of computer science and linguistics ...
and multiple dispatch.
In each case the capitalisation or lack thereof supports a different function. In the first, FORTRAN compatibility requires case-insensitive naming and short function names. The second supports easily discernible function and argument names and types, within the context of an imperative, strongly typed language. The third supports the macro facilities of LISP, and its tendency to view programs and data minimalistically, and as interchangeable. The fourth idiom needs much less syntactic sugar overall, because much of the semantics are implied, but because of its brevity and so lack of the need for capitalization or multipart words at all, might also make the code too abstract and homonymy, overloaded for the common programmer to understand.
Understandably then, such coding conventions are programming style, highly subjective, and can lead to rather opinionated debate, such as in the case of editor wars, or those about indent style. Capitalisation is no exception.
Camel case
Camel case: "theQuickBrownFoxJumpsOverTheLazyDog" or "TheQuickBrownFoxJumpsOverTheLazyDog"
Spaces and
punctuation
Punctuation (or sometimes interpunction) is the use of spacing, conventional signs (called punctuation marks), and certain typographical devices as aids to the understanding and correct reading of written text, whether read silently or aloud. An ...
are removed and the first letter of each word is capitalised. If this includes the first letter of the first word (CamelCase, "PowerPoint", "TheQuick...", etc.), the case is sometimes called upper camel case (or, illustratively, CamelCase), Pascal case in reference to the Pascal (programming language), Pascal programming language or bumpy case.
When the first letter of the first word is lowercase ("iPod", "eBay", "theQuickBrownFox..."), the case is usually known as lower camel case or dromedary case (illustratively: dromedaryCase). This format has become popular in the branding of information technology products and services, with an initial "i" meaning "
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
" or "intelligent", as in iPod, or an initial "e" meaning "electronic", as in email (electronic mail) or e-commerce (electronic commerce).
Snake case
Snake case: "the_quick_brown_fox_jumps_over_the_lazy_dog"
Punctuation is removed and spaces are replaced by single underscores. Normally the letters share the same case (e.g. "UPPER_CASE_EMBEDDED_UNDERSCORE" or "lower_case_embedded_underscore") but the case can be mixed, as in OCaml modules. The style may also be called ''pothole case'', especially in Python (programming language), Python programming, in which this convention is often used for naming variables. Illustratively, it may be rendered ''snake_case'', ''pothole_case'', etc. When all-upper-case, it may be referred to as ''screaming snake case'' (or ''SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE'') or ''hazard case''.
Kebab case
Kebab case: "the-quick-brown-fox-jumps-over-the-lazy-dog"
Similar to snake case, above, except hyphens rather than underscores are used to replace spaces. It is also known as spinal case, param case, Lisp case in reference to the Lisp (programming language), Lisp programming language, or dash case (or illustratively as kebab-case). If every word is capitalised, the style is known as train case (''TRAIN-CASE'').
In CSS, all property names and most keyword values are primarily formatted in kebab case.
Studly caps
Studly caps: e.g. "tHeqUicKBrOWnFoXJUmpsoVeRThElAzydOG"
Mixed case with no Semantics, semantic or Syntax, syntactic significance to the use of the capitals. Sometimes only vowels are upper case, at other times upper and lower case are alternated, but often it is simply random. The name comes from the sarcastic or ironic implication that it was used in an attempt by the writer to convey their own coolness. It is also used to mock the violation of standard English case conventions by marketers in the naming of computer software packages, even when there is no technical requirement to do soe.g., Sun Microsystems' naming of a windowing system NeWS. Illustrative naming of the style is, naturally, random: ''stUdlY cAps'', ''StUdLy CaPs'', etc.
Case folding and case conversion
In the character sets developed for computing, each upper- and lower-case letter is encoded as a separate character. In order to enable case folding and case conversion, the software needs to link together the two characters representing the case variants of a letter. (Some old character-encoding systems, such as the Baudot code, are restricted to one set of letters, usually represented by the upper-case variants.)
Case sensitivity, Case-insensitive operations can be said to fold case, from the idea of folding the character code table so that upper- and lower-case letters coincide. The conversion of letter case in a String (computer science), string is common practice in computer applications, for instance to make case-insensitive comparisons. Many high-level programming languages provide simple methods for case conversion, at least for the ASCII character set.
Whether or not the case variants are treated as equivalent to each other varies depending on the computer system and context. For example, user passwords are generally case sensitive in order to allow more diversity and make them more difficult to break. In contrast, case is often ignored in keyword searches in order to ignore insignificant variations in keyword capitalisation both in queries and queried material.
Unicode case folding and script identification
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
defines case folding through the three case-mapping properties of each Character (computing), character: upper case, lower case, and title case (in this context, "title case" relates to Typographic ligature, ligatures and
digraphs encoded as mixed-case Digraph (orthography)#In Unicode, single characters, in which the first component is in upper case and the second component in lower case). These properties relate all characters in scripts with differing cases to the other case variants of the character.
As briefly discussed in
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
Technical Note #26,
"In terms of implementation issues, any attempt at a unification of Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic would wreak havoc [and] make casing operations an unholy mess, in effect making all casing operations context sensitive […]". In other words, while the shapes of letters like A, B, E, H, K, M, O, P, T, X, Y and so on are shared between the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic alphabets (and small differences in their canonical forms may be considered to be of a merely Typography, typographical nature), it would still be problematic for a multilingual character set or a
font
In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design.
In mod ...
to provide only a ''single'' code point for, say, uppercase letter B, as this would make it quite difficult for a wordprocessor to change that single uppercase letter to one of the three different choices for the lower-case letter, the Latin b (U+0062), Greek β (U+03B2) or Cyrillic в (U+0432). Therefore, the corresponding Latin, Greek and Cyrillic upper-case letters (U+0042, U+0392 and U+0412, respectively) are also encoded as separate characters, despite their appearance being basically identical. Without letter case, a "unified European alphabet"such as ABБCГDΔΕЄЗFΦGHIИJ...Z, with an appropriate subset for each languageis feasible; but considering letter case, it becomes very clear that these alphabets are rather distinct sets of symbols.
Methods in word processing
Most modern word processors provide automated case conversion with a simple click or keystroke. For example, in Microsoft Office Word, there is a dialog box for toggling the selected text through UPPERCASE, then lowercase, then Title Case (actually start caps; exception words must be lowercased individually). The keystroke does the same thing.
Methods in programming
In some forms of BASIC there are two methods for case conversion:
UpperA$ = UCASE$("a")
LowerA$ = LCASE$("A")
C (programming language), C and
C++
C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...
, as well as any C-like language that conforms to its C standard library, standard library, provide these functions in the file ctype.h:
char upperA = toupper('a');
char lowerA = tolower('A');
Case conversion is different with different character sets. In ASCII or EBCDIC, case can be converted in the following way, in C:
#define toupper(c) (islower(c) ? (c) – 'a' + 'A' : (c))
#define tolower(c) (isupper(c) ? (c) – 'A' + 'a' : (c))
This only works because the letters of upper and lower cases are spaced out equally. In ASCII they are consecutive, whereas with EBCDIC they are not; nonetheless the upper-case letters are arranged in the same pattern and with the same gaps as are the lower-case letters, so the technique still works.
Some computer programming languages offer facilities for converting text to a form in which all words are capitalised. Visual Basic calls this "proper case"; Python (programming language), Python calls it "title case". This differs from usual Capitalization#Title case, title casing conventions, such as the English convention in which minor words are not capitalised.
History
Originally alphabets were written entirely in majuscule letters, spaced between well-defined upper and lower bounds. When written quickly with a pen, these tended to turn into rounder and much simpler forms. It is from these that the first minuscule hands developed, the half-uncials and cursive minuscule, which no longer stayed bound between a pair of lines.
These in turn formed the foundations for the Carolingian minuscule script, developed by Alcuin for use in the court of Charlemagne, which quickly spread across Europe. The advantage of the minuscule over majuscule was improved, faster readability.
In Latin, Papyrus, papyri from Herculaneum dating before 79 CE (when it was destroyed) have been found that have been written in old Roman cursive, where the early forms of minuscule letters "d", "h" and "r", for example, can already be recognised. According to papyrologist Knut Kleve, "The theory, then, that the lower-case letters have been developed from the fifth century uncials and the ninth century Carolingian minuscules seems to be wrong."
Both majuscule and minuscule letters existed, but the difference between the two variants was initially stylistic rather than orthographic and the writing system was still basically unicameral: a given handwritten document could use either one style or the other but these were not mixed. European languages, except for Ancient Greek and Latin, did not make the case distinction before about 1300.
The timeline of writing in Western Europe can be divided into four eras:
*Greek majuscule (9th–3rd century BCE) in contrast to the Greek uncial script (3rd century BCE – 12th century CE) and the later Greek minuscule
*Roman square capitals, Roman majuscule (7th century BCE – 4th century CE) in contrast to the Roman uncial (4th–8th century CE), Roman half uncial, and minuscule
*Carolingian majuscule (4th–8th century CE) in contrast to the Carolingian minuscule (around 780 – 12th century)
*Blackletter, Gothic majuscule (13th and 14th century), in contrast to the early Gothic (end of 11th to 13th century), Gothic (14th century), and late Gothic (16th century) minuscules.
Traditionally, certain letters were rendered differently according to a set of rules. In particular, those letters that began sentences or nouns were made larger and often written in a distinct script. There was no fixed capitalisation system until the early 18th century. The English language eventually dropped the rule for nouns, while the German language keeps it.
Similar developments have taken place in other alphabets. The lower-case script for the Greek alphabet has its origins in the 7th century and acquired its quadrilinear form (that is, characterised by ascenders and descenders) in the 8th century. Over time, uncial letter forms were increasingly mixed into the script. The earliest dated Greek lower-case text is the Uspenski Gospels (MS 461) in the year 835.
[The earliest known biblical manuscript is a palimpsest of Isajah in Syriac, written in 459/460. Bruce M. Metzger & Bart D. Ehrman, ''The Text of the New Testament'' (Oxford University Press: 2005), p. 92.] The modern practice of capitalising the first letter of every sentence seems to be imported (and is rarely used when printing Ancient Greek materials even today).
Type cases
The individual type blocks used in hand typesetting are stored in shallow wooden or metal drawers known as "
type case
A type case is a compartmentalized wooden box used to store movable type used in letterpress printing
Letterpress printing is a technique of relief printing. Using a printing press, the process allows many copies to be produced by repeated ...
s". Each is subdivided into a number of compartments ("boxes") for the storage of different individual letters.
The ''Oxford Universal Dictionary on Historical Advanced Proportional Principles'' (reprinted 1952) indicates that ''case'' in this sense (referring to the box or frame used by a compositor in the printing trade) was first used in English in 1588. Originally one large case was used for each typeface, then "divided cases", pairs of cases for majuscules and minuscules, were introduced in the region of today's Belgium by 1563, England by 1588, and France before 1723.
The terms ''upper'' and ''lower'' case originate from this division. By convention, when the two cases were taken out of the storage rack and placed on a rack on the Compositor (typesetting), compositor's desk, the case containing the capitals and small capitals stood at a steeper angle at the back of the desk, with the case for the small letters, punctuation, and spaces being more easily reached at a shallower angle below it to the front of the desk, hence upper and lower case.
Though pairs of cases were used in English-speaking countries and many European countries in the seventeenth century, in Germany and Scandinavia the single case continued in use.
Various patterns of cases are available, often with the compartments for lower-case letters varying in size according to the frequency of use of letters, so that the commonest letters are grouped together in larger boxes at the centre of the case.
The compositor takes the letter blocks from the compartments and places them in a composing stick, working from left to right and placing the letters upside down with the nick to the top, then sets the assembled type in a Galley proof, galley.
See also
*
All caps
In typography, all caps (short for "all capitals") refers to text or a font in which all letters are capital letters, for example: "THIS TEXT IS IN ALL CAPS". All caps may be used for emphasis (for a word or phrase). They are commonly seen in ...
* Alternating caps
* Camel case
* Capitalization
** Capitalization in English
* Initial, or drop cap
* Grammatical case
* Punctuation
* Roman cursive
* Roman square capitals
* Shift key
*
Small caps
In typography, small caps (short for "small capitals") are characters typeset with glyphs that resemble uppercase letters (capitals) but reduced in height and weight close to the surrounding lowercase letters or text figures. This is technicall ...
* Text figures
* Unicase
Notes
References
Further reading
*
{{Typography terms
Alphabets
Capitalization
Orthography
Typography
Articles with example C code