There are four common letter case types: upper case (capital letters), lower case (small letters), title case, and sentence case. With the knowledge of these four types and their proper usage, you can successfully write a full-fledged piece of content. This article discusses the appropriate usage of these four types.
What Is The Usage Of Letter Cases?
A letter case is a form that people use in a letter, manuscript, or any text written in a formal language. letter case differs from the font style, typeface, and type size used in the document.
Letter case should not be confused with proper nouns such as “United Kingdom” or “Chicago”. As previously mentioned proper nouns are often capitalized according to standard orthographic rules.
Meanwhile, people use lettercases to make their writing look more appealing. It makes words stand out and emphasizes certain words in a sentence.
What Is The Origin Of Letter Case
In today’s digital world, typing everything in lowercase is easy. However, this is not the traditional way of writing in English!
The usage of letter cases can be traced back to 825 AD, when Irish monks created the first paper with ink that dried quickly. People back then developed the usage of upper case letters to differentiate between similar-looking letters such as b and d or p and q. It was tradition to use the low-cap letters for all lowercase letters except for i, u, v, and j, which were not very common at that time.
As far as the proper nouns are concerned in writing systems, their usage varies by language. For example, the full capitalization of all words is called all-caps, and forgoing capitalization of first letters within sentences is called lowercase. The latter convention is sometimes referred to as sentence case.
In English writing, where the terms originated, upper-case letters are one of several cases or forms of a letter (including minuscule and majuscule). In modern computer use, an upper-case letter is any letter that is not lower-case.
Upper-case letters originated because handwritten medieval manuscripts were usually written on sheets with lines being spaced equally apart (for aesthetic reasons) so that with lines and middle spaces being equally wide, a tall character was normally equally narrow.
The reader had to accommodate such irregularity by leaning forward while reading to keep the letters from blurring together. Thus, People normally did writing with pen strokes abbreviated down to the minimum.
Common Types Of Letter Cases Explained
Now let’s discuss and shed some light on the different commonly used types of letter cases with some examples for better understanding.
Upper Letter Case
Upper-case letters are basically used to make a word’s initial letter stand out. It is also used for the headlines of books, newspapers, etc.
The main purpose of capital or uppercase letters is to indicate the start of a proper noun or a proper adjective, which is a word that describes the noun. In other words, when you capitalize a word, you’re telling people that the word is actually a name of something or an adjective that describes what the noun is.
Usage Of Upper Letter Case
Capital letters are used for proper nouns or the first word in a sentence. For example, the name of the country Canada is a proper noun, and it should always be written in caps. You should also write the first word in caps as well. For example, Canada is a country located in North America.
Meanwhile, Titles are capitalized when they are being used to refer to someone’s job or title (for example, The president said…). But they are not capitalized if they are being used as part of someone’s name (for example, John Adams was the president…).
In addition, Uppercase letters are commonly used for acronyms or abbreviations. Titles and headings, such as company names, personal names, product names, and book titles, must also begin with a capital letter utilizing uppercase.
Examples
- “All Good Things come to those who Wait.” – All words in uppercase show that they have been stressed or are more important.
- “The LORD is my shepherd.” – Only the word LORD is in capital letters or in uppercase except for the starting letter of the sentence to capture the attention of the reader.
Lower Letter Case
Lowercase is the most commonly used letter case nowadays, especially in digital spaces. So the question is, how come it came to be? Why did lowercase letters win over uppercase?
Lowercase letters gradually won out over uppercase letters due to various reasons, the most predominant being practicality. In addition, the ink used in printing was thick and resulted in less distinction between the strokes of lowercase letters, making it difficult for printers to create clear typefaces.
Additionally, since scribes had to write quickly and were not as familiar with lowercase forms, many irregularities needed to be smoothed out over time.
Uppercase letters posed too many challenges for printers at the time, and so they gradually transitioned to using lowercase instead. Today, we predominantly use lowercase letterforms because they are more aesthetically pleasing and easier to read than uppercase.
Usage Of Lower Letter Case
Lowercase letters are used in every other writing discipline, including words that begin sentences in some cases. In addition, they are easy to read and write a win-win situation for everyone involved.
For example, “he has an abundance of natural resources.”
Examples
- “he will be there in ten minutes.” – Using lowercase letters makes the words easier to read and understand. Some consider this type of writing incorrect, but most accept it.
Title Letter Case
Title case is also used for the titles of books, newspapers, etc. The rules for title cases are simple — capitalize the first letter of every word besides articles (a, an, the), prepositions (to, from), and conjunctions (and, but).
Which one is better if you have to choose between the title cases? The answer is, “it depends.” It’s a delicate issue. You are both technically correct and technically wrong if you’re only capitalizing the first letter of each word in the title. Sometimes this style is referred to as Mixed Title Case because it mixes lowercase letters with uppercase letters.
Usage Of Title Letter Case
The title letter case is used on titles and subtitles of newspapers, magazines, books, articles, essays, reports, and any other publication dealing with a subject.
Examples
- “The Godfather” – All the words in the title case show that they have been stressed or are more important.
- “The Lord of the Rings” – Only the first letter of each proper word is written in uppercase. This example is another application of the title case.
Sentence Letter Case
The Sentence case is a style of writing used in e-mail and on the internet that capitalizes the first letter of every sentence. However, as we know, we use the Sentence case when writing a sentence in formal disciplines.
Unlike uppercase and lowercase, it does not have any initial letters standing out from the rest of the text.
It’s easy to read, and it makes my blog look professional. Sentence case is also known as “down style”. It’s easier to write in than a title case because you don’t have to deal with capital letters.
Usage Of Sentence Letter Case
A sentence case is a style of writing in which the start of a sentence is expressed with a capital letter. Meanwhile, the remaining text is written in lower case letters. Its usage is common for writing e-mails, notes, and other documents written to individuals rather than to groups. Usage of sentence case is also frequent in personal correspondence, such as letters or e-mails,
Examples
- January comes after December.” – The names of months are capitalized as they are proper words. Meanwhile, other words are in lowercase.
- “Fish and chips, please.” – Another example of the sentence case in which the starting letter of the sentence is in a capital case and the rest is in lower case.
Conclusion
Title case, sentence case, and lowercase lettering are all methods of writing that capitalize different letters in a word. The main difference between them is the purpose for which they were designed. The title case is meant for titles, subtitles, and headings, while the sentence case is used in e-mails, on the internet, and in personal correspondence. Lowercase is the most commonly used form of writing today because it is easier to read and write than uppercase or title case. Each type has its own set of rules that must be followed in order to produce accurate results. It’s important to choose the right type of capitalization for your specific needs to ensure clarity and professionalism.
