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by gondola on January 25th, 2006

gondola

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What is the correct term for "lower case" letters?

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  • by notmrjohn on February 8th, 2006

    notmrjohn

    The word you are looking for is "Minuscule." from L. minuscula, in minuscula littera "slightly smaller letter," from L. minus "less."
    Capitals are majuscule. Once upon a time there was no need for the diferrentian, all writing was done in MAJUSCULE OR CAPITALS. ( WHAT'SMORE,ONCEUPONATIME,THEREWASNOSPACINGBETWEENWORDS. INADDITIONTHEREWASNOPUNCTUATIONCANYOUBELEAVEIT)
    Eventually spacing and punctuation developed to make things easier to read. Even before punctuation the scribes decided that the first letter of the first word of a thought and important words like nouns needed to be set off somehow. (In German nouns are still capitalized.) They usually just used a larger letter or one of a different style. When the scribes started using pen and ink on paper instead of sticks in wet clay or chisels in stone they developed a style that was slightly more rounded and faster to write than the Roman letters. That style was called Unical, Unicals were slightly smaller than their Roman equivelants. Early on, words were written with a large Unical capital and the rest of the letters the same size or slightly smaller in Roman. ( Even today a different style capital, like the first letter of a new chapter is called a Unical, regardless of its actual style.) Then the scribes found it was faster to do it the other way round, use the Roman at the beginning and the faster and naturally slightly smaller 'unical' for the rest. And then it just became standard to use the same style letter but make a discernible difference in size of the letters. That standardization was reinforced when printing with movable type became prevalent.
    Typesetters stood in front of a vertical case with several boxes to hold all the letters, since they used more of the minuscule letters, they were placed in the more accessible lower sections, or in the 'lower case.'
    Sometimes minUscule is spelled minIscule. That is totally wrong even tho some dictionaries are startin to say it is OK. It is a fine example of how language develops. It just seems logical that there is some connection between the minU in minuscule and the minI in miniature and the word miniscule meaning way itsybitsy. BUT. MinIscule, strictly speaking is a meaningless word. MinIscule is a corruption of minUscule with the meaning of anything real small from comparison to a small letter. It was influenced by miniature of course but miniature actually means "a reduced image," from It. miniatura "manuscript illumination or small picture," from the verb miniare "to illuminate a manuscript," from L. miniare "to paint red," from minium "red lead," used to make red ink. Around the mid 1700's it came to have the sense of "small" because pictures in medieval manuscripts were small. People then made an incorrect assumption that the min- in minuscule and the min- in miniature both meant small, instead of one referring to size and the other to lead. And so mini replaced min. Still seen in words like minor, minimus, minutia,etc.
    It isn't just words that have confusing origins. The Greek letter iota, which looks like an "i" became the Roman I. The iota is the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet, the name had been for ages, a synonym for anything way small. When the unicals came along the Roman I looked like a large Greek i. It was a coincidence. But folks naturally assumed somehow that the iota had always been a lowercase I. Then they blended the meaning of small from iota and minuscule and started thinking i was called iota because it was a miniscule I.
    Speaking of minutia, this answer has rapidly become a collection of minutiae. I can here you now. "Why iota whap you upside yore minuscule haid and see can I knock some sense into that miniature you call a brain case" [upper or lower]. I agree, I'm just glad pretty girls don't wear minus, which would probably have got all confused with the Hawaiian/Polynesian muumuus which would have got all connected with the Polynesian Bikini Atoll, and folks would think H- bomb meant Hawaiian bomb.


    (02-08-06)[nmj] "Exactly" what you wanted? And here I been priding myself on being the master of obfuscation. gondola, you ol tanker car you, let me introduce you to One Look dictionary at

    http://www.onelook.com/
    where I looked up "lower case" without the quote marks which led me to Wikipedia, which should not be trusted anymore than the Bag, but at least gave me words that I could take back to One Look, where if one looks at the upper right one will see " Word origin available." Always click on that to go to http://www.etymonline.com/ which don't tell you what a word means but where it came from which tells you what it really means. There you could look up obfuscation. Oddly enuff neither One look nor Ety had ever heard of the word majuscule, tho Ety used it in telling us where minuscule came from. How so ever I thank you for the thank you. But please do not let the fact that you that you gave me an "exactly" become known to Grandmaroses, who is to be found where ever pertinent and erudite answers are to be found. I would just soon that I not encounter her in answers where words such as minuscule and miniature are being bandied about.

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  • by Jon Perryman on January 28th, 2006

    Jon Perryman

    Lowercase letters is an acceptable term. Letters should only apply to non-capital letters but it's used so ofter as both that it makes it ambiguous. Lowercase and uppercase comes from the typesetters of years gone by and actually mean non-capitol characters were in the lower case.

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